Secondary Emotion
by theMoonIsaFaker
Summary: Why don't you tell 'em how you really feel.
1. Chapter 1

Lars was transformed into light and separated from his physical form while they teleported, and it still didn't get rid of the feeling that his stomach was full of rocks. Standing on the warp pad at Steven's place, being back at Beach City-it was at once familiar and totally alien after spending over a week amongst the constant sounds of insects and birds and the humidity of the island. Steven hopped from the pad, but Lars stayed where he was, absorbing the change. Even the time of day was different, evident from the darkness seeping through the windows, but the sound of rain hitting the roof at least suggested similar weather.

"Steven's home!" the boy sang loudly, running across the floor of the room with the bubbled gem held proudly aloft. "Look what we got!"

Lars glanced at Sadie beside him. She hadn't moved either. She was still turned away from him, hunched over, leaning her weight against the spear she clutched in both hands. Her blonde hair was tangled and streaked with mud. Her only motion was the rise and fall of her shoulders as she tried to catch her breath.

"Pearl? Amethyst? Garnet?" Steven knelt on the floor to peer under a couch. A loud peal of thunder rattled the windowpanes.

Slowly, Sadie stepped off the warp pad. She moved gradually towards the couch, the end of the spear tapping against the floorboards once every few seconds. Lars knew he should help her. He knew he should have her hold on to him for support. But at the same time he knew even more strongly that he shouldn't touch or even speak to her. Lars felt sure she was going to look over her shoulder at him with disgust. But a moment later he was suddenly afraid that she wasn't going to look back at him at all.

"Amethyst! Amethyyyyst! Wake up!" Steven was yelling at a purple shape on top of a fridge. He stood on tiptoe to open the freezer door and slam it shut, startling the pile of hair and limbs into bolting upright.

"Huh? Steven?" The gem's voice was rough with sleep. She squinted down at him. "Where'd you come from?"

"I'm the warp master, remember? Look what I got!"

"Whaaaaat! Steven! You got a _gem?!_"

Lars looked back and forth between the two gems and Sadie, who by now was sitting on the floor and resting her head against the cushions of the couch with her eyes closed. He tried to think of what he should do. He tried to think of what he /could/ do. Sadie didn't want to be around him. Steven was happy and safe at home with a gem around to look after him. Lars looked down at his bare feet. He had dripped muddy water all over the crystal surface he was standing on. He could leave and only be making a mess at his own home.

He didn't want Sadie to know he was there at all anymore but he also didn't want her to know he was going. He stepped gingerly down from the pad and made his way towards the front door. It wasn't difficult to move quietly, since Steven and Amethyst were still excitedly shouting back and forth. The door was pushed against his hands as he opened it by a breeze from the storm, and he made sure it latched shut behind him as he slipped outside.

The summer night air was warm but the raindrops were heavy and cool against his skin. He was glad that he'd always found both thunderstorms and late night walks to be comforting, since he knew it would be at least a half-hour till he reached his house. He'd made it down the steps and was heading down the sandy ramp when he heard an all-too-familiar "LAAAAARRRS" erupt from behind him.

He groaned and turned around to see Steven waving from the porch.

"Steven," he called above the sound of the rain. "I'm trying to go home." But Steven was already racing down the stairs towards him.

"Lars! You can't leave yet! Sadie said she might stay over! It's like a party!" he said with a grin.

"That's awesome. But I just wanna go home."

"Oh...okay." Steven's whole body slumped in disappointment. Lars sighed heavily.

"Look. Thanks for the vacation," he said. "I, uh, it was...great."

Steven laughed in response, bouncing back to his usual state of happiness. "Noooo problem!" he declared with a thumbs up.

"Yeah. Okay. See ya later, Steven." Lars turned away again.

"Okay! Bye, Lars!"

Steven ran back into the house and Lars cringed as he heard the kid loudly announce his departure. He knew Sadie would be mad at him. And he knew that she'd be mad at him if he stayed. He hated that it was impossible to be doing anything right and he squeezed his hands into fists and marched his way down the hill before anyone could call after him again.

The rain had solidified the sand along the shore, but even so he walked a bit unsteadily across it. Barring the occasional far-off lightning strike, Lars could barely see anything, so he guided himself by keeping the sound of the crashing surf on his left. Eventually he rounded the cliff and the streetlights of Beach City appeared on the horizon. He was suddenly very aware of the distance between him and his house. There was still some adrenaline left over in him from the last few minutes on the island, but it was wearing off, and so was its numbing effect. When he stepped from the sand to the sidewalk, the shock of the cement reverberated from the heel of his foot, up his leg, and through his spine, and his body remembered that it was hurting from a twenty-foot fall.

The pain worsened every minute he plodded through the empty streets, but his emotions were beginning to sting at him again as well. He bit his lip, crossed his arms, and focused on the physical ache to drown out the rest.

When he could finally see his house, each step he took barely seemed to move him forward. He almost didn't have the energy to stand anymore and when he reached his front steps he let himself collapse onto them, swearing under his breath at the intense relief it gave his legs and feet. He let himself rest there until the pouring rain made him shiver, and then he reluctantly crawled up the steps to lay flat on his back on the porch, sheltered from the downpour by its overhang. He closed his eyes and listened to the thunder rolling across the night sky in low growls and sudden crashes.

After a while the sharp pain in his limbs had dulled to a general soreness, and he eventually rolled onto his side and pushed himself upright. He dug into the pocket of his jeans for the key he kept with him and opened the front door.

The house was totally dark and silent. He wasn't sure if either of his parents were home or if they were out working, but he wanted to keep quiet just in case. He didn't feel like talking to anyone right now. He really didn't feel like having to explain where he'd been for over a week. Lars walked carefully through the dark and slid his hand over a wall until he found a switch, and a single bulb overhead illuminated the kitchen in soft, warm light. He'd missed having electricity.

The clock on the wall told him it was just before one in the morning. He didn't feel like going to bed. Technically, he'd just woken up from a full night's sleep a couple of hours ago. He sighed to himself and picked up a dishcloth and ran it down his arms and over his face, wiping away the worst of the rain. He wanted to put on some dry clothes but, before that, he wanted to eat. He'd also missed having a variety of food that they didn't have to catch.

Lars cracked open the fridge and looked inside for something that he could make without using a lot of energy and concentration that he didn't have at the moment. He decided on an omelet, knowing he'd made enough of them in his life to do it with his eyes closed and one hand tied. He heard the rain grow louder as he took some eggs out of the fridge. He'd put them on the dishcloth and found a mixing bowl before realizing the mistake he'd made. He'd gotten six eggs. He'd been thinking of cooking for Sadie and Steven, too.

"Shit."

Lars stepped away from the counter, bringing his hands to his face. He'd almost managed to push all of it out of mind and now it was coming back at him all at once. He was thinking about Sadie hating him, he was thinking about how he felt on the island, he was thinking about how he felt now. He was missing Steven and Sadie after being with them for nine days straight and he didn't want to think about them and he wanted to be left alone but he felt so isolated that it hurt. He was so upset and he was so angry.

"_Shit_..." He twisted his fingers through his hair and tugged at it. He shoved the door of the fridge shut with his foot, rattling the jars on the shelves inside. He began pacing across the room. He was feeling so many things and feeling them so intensely that it was a physical ache inside him. His hip bumped against a chair as he paced past it, scraping it across the tiled floor. He drew his hands away from his face down the sides of his head to his shoulders and the motion snapped the dry, fraying vine around his neck. Five heavy crystals fell to the floor, loud enough that it seemed to echo through the house. Lars froze in place and stared down at them.

"Fuck." His vision blurred with tears.

"Lars?"

Lars jumped in surprise and swung around to see his father standing in the doorway, shielding his tired eyes from the light. His dad's expression went from confusion to delight in a second.

"Lars! Hi! Welcome back!" he laughed, opening his arms wide to embrace his son.

"Hey, Dad," Lars said into the man's shoulder, weakly returning the hug.

"We missed you-oh, your mom's at work, by the way-but we heard Sadie was gone too, and we figured you kids had eloped or were off with that magic boy, uh..."

"Steven," Lars finished for him. "Yeah. We went to an island with him and we...got lost."

"Of course. That's my Lars." His dad smiled proudly at him. "Surviving on an island on your own-you and Sadie could always take care of yourselves. You're tough." He stepped back to look Lars up and down, taking in his condition. "Did you have to walk home in this weather?" he asked. Lars nodded. "Yeah, you're soaked, kid. You wanna go put on some clothes that are dry and uh, still in one piece?" He glanced down at Lars's bare left leg.

Lars shrugged and looked at the wall.

"Aw, go on, I know you're cold. I can make you something to eat while you change. You seem hungry," he laughed, gesturing to the pile of eggs.

"I didn't mean to get so many," Lars mumbled.

"Sure. Get going, kid. What do you want, fried? Scrambled? I don't know how to make eggs Benedict."

"I was gonna do an omelet, but whatever," Lars said over his shoulder as he walked towards his room. "Anything's good."

He could hear his dad taking dishes out as he opened his door and switched on his light. Everything in his room was just as he left it, even the work shirt lying on the pillow of his bed.

"Dad?" Lars called as he opened drawers, looking for something to wear. "Were we covered okay at work?"

"Oh, yeah, the usual substitutes stepped in," his dad shouted back. "Dana and...the other one. They say they're fine keeping the place up for you until you're ready to go back."

Lars stripped off the clothes he'd only gotten to remove when they would take turns bathing under the island's waterfall. He raised his hands above his head and closed his eyes and stretched as far as he could, working out the dull pain in his muscles. He arched his spine, let his head fall back, and focused on breathing deeply in and out. Eventually he was feeling slightly more relaxed, and he dragged a bathrobe across his skin until he was as dry as he could get. He pulled on an old sweater and pajama pants and went back into the kitchen.

"Here, sit." His dad pulled out a chair at the table for him and put a plate of eggs in front of him. "You thirsty? We've got orange juice-"

"That's good. I've only had water since I left."

His dad poured his drink and handed it to him with a pat on the shoulder. Lars ate silently, savoring the taste of something that wasn't fish. His dad bent down and picked the crystals up off the floor, then sat down across from Lars and put them on the table.

"These yours?" he asked.

Lars shrugged. "I guess," he said. "Steven made a necklace and gave it to me. I broke it."

"Nice one," his dad teased. "Well, they're very beautiful."

Lars didn't answer. He didn't want to keep talking about it. He didn't want to say he'd been hoping to keep the necklace, or explain how he got it in the first place. It was just something else that would get him upset again, and the only thing he wanted to do was keep himself from feeling that way anymore. He glanced up and saw his dad looking at him with an expression of quiet amusement.

"What?" Lars said, with an edge to his voice he was unable to hold back. He chided himself internally and glared at his omelet. He knew it would've been better if he'd kept to himself for the rest of the night. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Lars, it's okay," his dad said. "I know you like to be alone sometimes. It's just nice to have you back. If we lived anywhere else in the world we would've been so worried about you kids disappearing like that, but here...well, in a single week I saw an explosion in the sky on my way to work, and a few days later you were on fire, and it was barely anything out of the ordinary. But we did miss you, Lars."

Lars kept his eyes on the table. He slowly ate the last of the omelet and then picked up the plate and carried it over to the sink.

"I might have to go to work later," he said with his back to his dad, turning on the faucet to rinse the plate in the water. "I gotta go if Sadie is."

His dad laughed quietly. "If she's in the same state you are, I really doubt she's going back to work first thing in the morning."

Lars sighed. "She might." He turned around and leaned against the counter, arms folded. "And I don't want her having a grudge cuz she went back to work and I wasn't there too."

His dad lifted a hand in a shrug. "Well, if you really think it's important-"

"It's not that it's _important,_ it's that it's gonna suck if she goes and I don't, okay?"

"Okay, okay, I guess it wouldn't hurt to text her or something."

Lars's stomach dropped. "Oh, god..."

"What is it?"

Lars lowered himself to the floor and put a hand over his eyes.

"Lars? ...Lars, what's wrong?" His dad pushed his chair back. Lars drew his limbs closer to himself. "What's the matter?"

"_Nothing!_ Christ! My phone's in the ocean, okay?" He glared up at his dad.

"Oh." A pause. "Well, I'm sure we can get another one, you know."

Lars felt like he was falling apart and he was furious that this was happening in the middle of his kitchen and he couldn't at least be alone with all of it.

"Lars?"

"_What?!_" he snapped, unable to restrain his anger anymore.

"Lars," his dad said quietly.

Lars felt like a child as tears began sliding down his cheeks. His dad walked over and knelt down to sit beside him.

"I don't want to talk about anything," Lars hissed through his teeth. "I don't want to talk."

"Lars. Please tell me what's wrong."

He couldn't see clearly through his tears. He really didn't want to cry in front of someone all over again. He was angry at his dad for refusing to leave him alone when he was like this, he was angry at himself for being like this in the first place, he was so angry at Sadie that it was making his knees shake.

"Me and Sadie-we just-we had a fight." He turned his face away and struggled to steady his breathing. "I don't want to talk about it."

He saw a bright flash of lightning in his peripheral vision and the thunder was immediate and startlingly loud. Lars shoved himself up off the floor.

"I don't want to do this," he stated. "Dad, come on, get up. We're not doing this. I don't want to do this."

"Slow down, kid," his dad said, gripping the countertop to pull himself up as well. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Are all-are all those cuts you got from the island?"

"Yes!" Lars snapped. "Yes, I'm sure! I'm fine! I don't want to have a fucking discussion about this and I don't want anybody watching me cry in front of them again and me and Sadie had a fight and it wasn't my fuckin' fault, and she's mad at me cuz I'm mad at her, and I'm mad at her for that too, and so she doesn't wanna be around me, and that's all it is, okay?!" He'd raised his voice in an effort to keep it from shaking.

"Lars, it's okay." His dad spoke with a gentleness that made Lars even angrier. "It's okay. I'm sure you two will be fine. It's not like you never argued before-"

"This one was different."

"How come?"

"Dad! It was different! I don't want to talk about it and I wish you could just fucking believe me about it cuz-"

"I do. I'm sorry, I believe you, I just...I want to understand as best I can. So I can help."

Lars bit his lip in frustration and stared down at the table. He nudged one of the crystals with a fingertip and then picked it up before turning around to face his dad.

"I'm trying to tell you: _I don't want to talk about it._"

"It isn't...I'm not trying to make you tell me anything you don't want to. I just want to know how I can help you."

"I don't need helping! I just want to be alone!"

"Lars-"

"_Stop!_" he sobbed. A fresh wave of tears spilled down his face as if he hadn't tried to hold them back at all. He squeezed the rock tight in his hand so it dug into his palm. His head dropped and he pressed his fists against his forehead, shoulders shaking as he fought to silence his crying. He just wanted to be alone for a few minutes, to cry while no one could watch him. He didn't want to have to explain to anyone why he was upset. He didn't want to talk about how whenever he closed his eyes he remembered what it felt like when he kissed Sadie, and what it felt like when she kissed him back, and what it felt like when she put her hands on his body. And how that made it hurt even more that he was in a worse place with Sadie now than maybe he'd ever been. And how the next thing he'd remember is exactly how fucking awful it had been the instant he'd realized Sadie had been lying to him. Because even the memory of that cold shock of emotion was enough to make him cry harder, and he sure as hell didn't want to talk about it too.

Eventually, he couldn't help it; he sucked in a breath and at the height of it a piercing sob broke out. He squeezed his eyes shut, grit his teeth, and rubbed the back of his wrist across his face to wipe away the streams of tears and snot.

"Dad," he whimpered.

In a heartbeat, his father's arm was across his back, gently pulling him to the side till he was leaning against his dad's shoulder. Lars really didn't want to but he cried freely anyways, too broken up and raw to fight off any offering of comfort anymore. His dad squeezed his arm and held him closer.

Lars felt the stinging guilt he always did when he ended up taking his anger out on his dad. He knew it was the dead of night, and that his dad would be tired all day at work because of this. He knew his dad had probably been working extra hours already, because Lars had been gone for a whole week and that was a decent amount of money they had to make up for. But he knew his dad would never complain about any of it to him. He knew that even if he quit his job, his dad probably wouldn't give him a hard time for it. He knew that he wasn't easy to be around, especially in a bad mood, which he was in a lot, and his dad still always made efforts to spend time with him, even if Lars rejected them on days he wanted to be by himself. He knew that his dad always had unconditional support for him, even when everyone thought Lars was a waste of time, including Lars himself. In the week just before going to the island, he had been in school when suddenly he was overcome with such a powerful sense of emptiness and despair that he went home sick, called in sick to work, went straight to his bed, and was still there seven hours later when his parents got home. He'd felt pangs of shame when he woke up to them finding him curled in the dark of his room instead of closing at the Big Donut. But his mom had simply asked him if he wanted her to heat some soup for him, and his dad had brought him another blanket and asked if he needed anything. Lars had shook his head no and stared off at the wall, and his dad had left and was back in his room an hour and a half later, having driven all the way to a bakery in Charm City to bring Lars a bag of the lemon cookies he especially loved.

Lars turned towards his dad and pushed his face into his dad's sleeve, holding on to it with one hand.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm not mad at you-I'm just-"

"Shh, it's okay, I know." His dad rubbed the center of his back in circles. "I know. You're hurt. It's alright."

Lars sniffed. "I'm sorry, though, you're-you're never mad at me even when I-and I keep-I'm sorry I'm like this, Dad, I wish I-"

"Lars, it's _okay._ You're my kid, and I'm your dad. It's my job to take care of you. Even when you're mad at me. I know you, and I know what it's like when you're upset, and I love you, whatever mood you're in. I know you're doing your best-"

Lars let out a hoarse sob and clutched at his dad's shirt.

"Lars?"

"I _am_ doing my best," he said between sobs. "That's the-the _problem._"

"...What do you mean?"

Lars turned the crystal over in his hand and listened to the rain.

"_This_ is my best," he sniffed. "I'm doing my best, and look at me."

He heard his dad make a quiet sound in his throat.

"I keep doing my best and my best is shit and I'm-bad at everything," Lars said. "And I'm not doing anything, except getting mad all the time, and I wish I wasn't so-I wish I wasn't-"

He choked on his words and wiped his eyes on his own shoulder. His dad didn't speak, so Lars tried to.

"I just wish..." He blinked out tears. "I wish I wasn't so fucking bad with, just, _people._ Like, I can't even-I'm even messing up with _Sadie._ I c-I can never meet new people anyway cuz I'm so-I wish-even when I can act normal it doesn't do anything, they end up hating me, cuz I'm-I'm so-" Lars trembled and cried. "Why is it so hard? Why's it so hard for me?"

In the next moment, his dad got both arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug, a hand holding the back of his head. Lars felt like a total wreck, still covered in dried mud, snot and tears all over his face, shivering and gasping in wet sobs and whines, feeling so many things and feeling them so intensely that he had no chance of sorting any of them out.

"I hate this!" he sobbed. "How come everybody else-how come _I'm_ so bad at shit that everybody else just _does?_ I _hate_ this, I hate having to feel like this all the time just because I'm so-" He hid his face against his dad's shoulder. "It's not worth it. I _hate_ this."

Lars cried hard and bitterly. His dad held him steady, softly stroked his tangled hair, and the thunderstorm periodically reminded them of its presence with waves of rain and distant growls. Lars wanted to calm down, but it was no use. He was in a horribly familiar place, where he felt so unbearably low and hopeless that all he could think of was each time he'd felt like this before. It made him carry not only what had happened on the island, but the added weight of every horrible day he could remember having. And as usual, its effect was brutal. He felt like he couldn't even make it to the end of the day this way. He /knew/ things would seem better soon, even within the hour, he knew they did every time, but he couldn't make himself feel it. There was a wall closing in on his mind that said his whole past, present, and future was the pain he was experiencing now, and it was suffocating him, and he couldn't force himself to stop crying.

After a while he'd cried long enough that he'd managed to vent off some of the pure stress, and he could hear his dad quietly telling him every few seconds that it was okay. Lars pulled away gently and covered his face with his hands for a minute, till his breathing hitched only occasionally and his tears had slowed, and then he wiped his eyes and looked at his dad, blinking hard.

"Lars, I'm so sorry," his dad said. He picked up the dishcloth to wipe off some of the tears from Lars's face, and Lars let him. "I'm so sorry. You're tough as hell, kid."

"What." Lars coughed out a flat laugh.

"It's true, I know you don't know it, but you are," his dad said with a sad smile. "Some people...the kind of stuff you feel, kid, some people never have to feel that way even once in their entire lives. And I see you deal with it all the time. You're strong."

"Yeah, well," Lars sniffed. "It doesn't really matter if I can't even like, handle a shitty job, or a shitty English class, or anything."

"No, listen." His dad put the hand with the dishcloth under Lars's chin and tilted it up so Lars was looking him in the face. "Those things are hard for you. When it takes you so much effort just to go to work, or write your essay, or just...get up in the morning and get out of your pajamas...when those things are hard to do, it means you have to go through so much just to do things that other people don't even have to think about. I know you. I see how hard it is for you."

Lars breathed in and out, trying to sort through all his thoughts.

"I mean," he said, "Maybe it's hard for me, but all this stuff is so easy for other people like-getting changed in the morning, it's not supposed to take any effort at _all,_ and then i take, like, ages, and so i never get anything else done anyway cuz it takes me a whole day to eat something-"

"No, Lars, you're thinking of it like-you're looking at it the wrong way. See, people who don't know what it's like, they don't even have to think about it-sure, if you tell them it's too hard for you to go to school, they'll say, 'it's hard for everyone,' and think you're just not trying, but you know that you are. I know you are. "

Lars lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He knew that he wasn't making it up. He knew how it felt on one of his bad days. But it was hard to pit what he thought against what he knew everyone else thought. He couldn't make himself _feel_ that he really believed he was really trying.

"You're strong, and we're always proud of you," his dad continued. "Yeah, it's hard work for pretty much everybody to have to go to school. But it's hard work for you to do that, _and_ it's hard work for you to just...be alive. You're strong. And I know maybe it doesn't feel that way, when nobody else sees it, but there are other people out there who know what it's like. And me, I don't quite know what it's like either, but I see you going through this, and I know it's real. I know how bad it is. People get it, if they really know you. People who love you, they understand."

Lars turned his head away in an attempt to hide several new falling tears, but the breath he drew shuddered, and the way his dad rubbed his back made him think that it was pretty obvious anyways.

"So...what about Sadie, then?" his dad asked.

"What _about_ her." Lars wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, if it's upsetting you, if something bad happened, I think maybe you should talk to _her_ about it," his dad said gently.

"I don't want to," Lars said with a huff. His dad gave a quiet laugh and Lars shot him a look.

"I only mean...it's like, you have more to talk about than saying you're mad at her. It's more than that."

Lars bristled at that, forgot any embarrassment about crying, and faced his dad with clenched fists.

"I'm not _pretending_ to be mad, I _am_ mad, and I have a damn good reason even if I can't tell you what it is. This...it's real, okay? How I feel about it is _real._ I _am_ mad at her, it's not a cover or front or whatever. It's _real._"

"Yes, yes, it is," his dad said quickly. "I'm sorry. I didn't say that well. God, it's real, and please keep telling yourself that. Anything you're ever feeling, remind yourself that it's real. And your anger is definitely real, and I'm not going to pretend like it's even always a bad thing, but...what I mean, Lars, is that something made you feel angry in the first place."

"Yeah. Sadie," Lars said flatly.

"Come on, you know what I'm trying to say." His dad looked at the ceiling for inspiration. "I mean that...when you're angry, it can help if you try to remember what you felt that made you feel angry."

Lars rolled the crystal between his palms and stared at his dad for a few seconds before saying that he didn't really get it. His dad drummed the fingers of one hand against his leg as if he were working out a math problem in his head.

"Okay. So...being angry, that is real, but some other emotion came first for you to be angry about in the first place. Like sadness, or fear, or something. See, the way I always see it, anger is something defensive. You get angry because you got hurt, or because you're trying to avoid being hurt. And the anger isn't a lie, I promise I'm not trying to tell you that. It's the opposite, really. If you're mad, it's a sign that you can follow in the direction of a more complicated picture of everything you're feeling. More of the truth."

"Okay..." Lars shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair.

"So, tell Sadie the truth," his dad said. "Tell her what you're feeling. I get that you don't want to go up to her and remind her that you're angry with her. But it would probably help if you went and told her what's been hurting you. You said you had a fight? You said...did she make you cry?"

"Jeez, Dad," Lars said, feeling himself blush . "It's not-it's a long story, okay? We had a fight because-well, we shouldn't even have been fighting in the first place, cuz I don't see how she could blame me for being mad at her for what happened, like, I'm _so sorry_ that I got upset and I got mad and-"

"There! See?" his dad interrupted, a bit too cheerfully. "You said you got upset first. Tell her that! Tell her what made you upset, tell her why it upsets you that she's angry too. Because, see, she might not want to hear that you're angry, but I think if you could tell her what's hurting you, she'd be interested in that. You kids are close. I think you both care when the other is hurt."

Lars bit his lip, sighed, shrugged again.

"I don't know. I mean, we're...I just kinda feel like maybe this time I should just let it go," he mumbled. "Like, if she doesn't want to be around me after this, I can just...let it happen, y'know? Like I think this is as far as it's gonna go, and she's seen what it's like, and we can just let go and it'll be fine. I don't wanna force things to be okay."

"Whoa, slow down there." His dad picked up Lars's empty glass and put it in the sink with his plate. "Things could feel different if you just give it a little bit of time. A few hours, even. You don't have to convince yourself that you and Sadie aren't going to be friends anymore, and that you don't care about it. I know you're scared of having to feel like this again, and you'd rather hurt yourself now than be hurt by someone else in the future, but you don't have to be so afraid and pessimistic about it all. You just have to give yourself a break for a bit, then try talking with Sadie, and see where to go from there."

Lars felt exhausted, physically and mentally and emotionally. He looked at his dad, and he looked at the crystal in his hand, its faces glinting with sparks of electric blue, pink, purple, and gold. It was stunningly beautiful even in the light of their old incandescent kitchen bulb. He thought of Sadie, and of what he'd felt when he realized what she'd done right after they got on the island, he thought of how he felt when he fell asleep with her body against his, of how he felt after they teleported back to Beach City. Everything was still so raw.

"I guess I could go talk to her later," he said quietly. "Maybe. I don't know."

"Look, I know all of this is easier said than done. And I know it's all easier for me to be saying it, too. I just think you could do yourself a lot of good by giving yourself some rest, and maybe along the way try to think of what you want to say to Sadie. Though, try explaining it to yourself first."

The clock on the wall chimed quietly.

"Aw, Dad," Lars said with a grimace. "It's already two. What time are you supposed to get up for work?"

"Hey, listen, don't worry about it," his dad said firmly. "You're finally back, you've had a rough time-being here is worth it."

"Dad, come on..."

"So I'll take a nap when I get home, it's _fine,_ Lars. You really think I'd rather sleep through this? Yeah, right." His dad nudged him on the arm. "Hey, a smile! That's the good stuff."

"Oh my god, Dad, shut _up_..."

"Alright, I know, I know...but speaking of getting some sleep, you look tired."

"Well, I really only woke up a few hours ago, but I guess I could probably go back to sleep for a while if I tried. I really wanna lie down, anyway. But I'm gonna take like three showers in a row first."

"Hmm. Fair enough. You still hungry, by the way? Did you kids get enough to eat while you were out there?"

"Yeah, we were okay. I'm good for now. I just really want a shower now."

"Come on, try to think of something else for me to do for you first," his dad said. "I'm trying to make up for lost time."

"Here." Lars held out the crystal that was still in his hand. "Put this somewhere for me."

His dad smiled.

"That hardly counts, but fine. Give me that and go take your shower."

Lars dropped the crystal into his dad's hands and met his eyes for a moment.

"Thanks, Dad." He turned away and began to walk out of the kitchen.

"Hey, just promise me one thing, okay? I'm invoking the dad power to tell you to do just one thing tomorrow."

"What is it?" Lars looked back at him.

"Don't go to work tomorrow."

Lars stared at him for a moment, and then his dad smiled, and then Lars raised his face towards the drum of falling rain and laughed.


	2. Chapter 2

_(A/N: I didn't forget about this story or drop it or anything. You might be horrified to learn that this is really how long it takes me to write half the time. Maybe if we're lucky I can get the next part out faster and have this done within a god damned year of our lives. Anyway at least it was all worth the wait, aka not particularly long or eventfu o)_

Lars washed every inch of his body from the top of his head to his toes and then back up again, stopping only when his skin smelled like pineapple and he could slip his fingers through his hair without catching any tangles. Then he made the water as hot as he could bear and stood beneath it for a solid five minutes, letting it hit him at the base of his neck and run down his back. It helped ease away the tightness in his muscles and the sound of the shower was calming, and if Lars didn't feel good, he at least felt relaxed.

He dried himself off with an old towel and wrapped up in it as he lowered himself onto the rug. He loved the feeling of finally being clean, the softness of the towel encircling him, and the warmth of the steam throughout the room. He could just sit there and breathe and not think about anything at all.

The shower took him about a half hour from start to finish, and by the time he walked out of the bathroom, his dad had already gone back to bed, but had left a small lamp on for him. Lars went over to the lamp and switched it off, and closed his eyes as he made his way to his bedroom in the dark. The small space of his room was warm. Lars shrugged the towel off of himself to expose his damp skin to the air. He stood in the middle of the room and looked at the clock telling him it was half past three in the morning, and looked at himself in the mirror, and looked at his bed. As strange as it was being away from the island, he finally felt at home. Which was nice, after being haunted for so long by the gnawing fear that he'd never see it again. There were still negative thoughts buzzing around the background noise of his mind, but crying without restraint and the long, hot shower had dulled the intensity of those emotions and left him with a sense of steadiness that had been missing before. He felt kind of okay, and like he'd keep being okay for as long as it would take to fall asleep. He kept repeating it calmly in his head: _It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Worry about other things later. Right now, it's okay. It's_ okay.

He turned off the light in the room and closed his eyes, and soon the gentle beat of the rain sharpened in the darkness. For a few minutes he just kept still and concentrated on drawing deep, gradual breaths, holding them, and letting them out as slowly as he could. Despite a lingering rawness from crying, he started to feel an emptiness which, unlike the panicked, hurting emptiness of before, was bringing on a sense of tranquility.

He reached a hand out towards the space where he knew his bed was, felt the blankets under his fingers, pulled them back, and slid underneath them. Lying on a mattress instead of the ground was an enormous improvement. He rolled over to lie on his stomach, yawned into the pillow, and did his best to relax and quiet his mind. He listened closely to the sound of the rain on the roof. He loved the gentle thunder that still rumbled in the distance, as if the storm was reassuring him that it was still there. He pulled a blanket up over his head to soften the noises around him and keep out any light. It wasn't long before he caught his thoughts drifting along the sort of logic that only made sense in a dream. The realization woke him up a bit, surprising him that he was already so close to falling asleep, but the murmur of the rain quickly lulled him back to the border of unconsciousness.

There were five minutes left before class started. At his locker, Lars was growing nervous, unable to find any of the notes or textbooks he needed. He suddenly noticed that he was the only person in the hallway, and looked at the clock to find that he was now half an hour late for class. He remembered he was missing an important test and abandoned the locker, running down the hall trying to find the room he needed, but all of them were empty. He stopped at the front of the building, breathless and panicked, and saw that he wasn't even in the right place, and that his actual school was across the street. Crowds of students were leaving it. He'd missed the entire day of school and missed all his midterms. He ran outside and sprinted towards the school in the hope that he could find a teacher, anyone who could help him before he failed all his classes and the entire year of school. All the doors were locked, and he beat his fist against the metal, and the sky was already getting dark, and a second later Lars woke up.

He shoved himself upright and grabbed the clock beside his bed, reading 7:19 over and over while his brain struggled to process it. He tried to remember what class he needed to be in at that time. His heart was already beating hard when he noticed that he wasn't in school. Instead, he was in his room at home, lying naked in his bed. He blinked at the clock, gradually beginning to understand that he'd been dreaming. He let out a long sigh in relief. Then he wondered why he was there in his room instead of lying in the grass, waking up to harsh sunlight and the sounds of breaking waves and Steven's laughter. It seemed to take ages to remember the events of the past day that had brought him off the island and there to his home. He was still half-asleep and it was more than he wanted to think about any further, so he dropped back down against his pillow and closed his eyes.

Four more hours passed before he woke up again. Some light from outside was shining onto his wall. It was the muted light of a thickly clouded sky, gentle on his tired eyes, as if it was inviting him to participate in the day rather than forcing him to. Lars arched his back and rubbed a hand across his face, blinking up at his ceiling. He felt well-rested for the first time in recent memory and actually ready to get up, yet he also wanted to savor the incredibly rare experience of taking a day off work and getting to sleep in for as long as he liked.

After lying there for a while more, Lars slipped out from under the blankets, putting on some socks and a shirt and boxer shorts before leaving his room. It was surreal to wake back up to his usual life, as if the island had never happened at all, but the light scratches and bruises scattered over his body gave him certainty that the so-called vacation had been real. And feeling like he'd woken up with a head cold was proof of what happened right before he went to bed. He put some water in a kettle to boil on their stove, then leaned against the counter and stared out the window at the roofs of the neighboring houses and the grey sky beyond them. It was so strange to be alone again that he didn't really know what to do with himself.

A sputtering whistle jolted him out of a reverie. He shook himself further awake and made a cup of tea to try to clear the unpleasant feeling of congestion. At first it was too hot to drink, and he sat bent over it at the table, breathing in its steam and cradling its heat in his hands. The tea was slow to cool and he hadn't managed to drink even half of the cup when he heard the grind of keys in the lock of the front door.

"Mom?" he guessed as he heard the door creak open.

"Oh my goodness, Lars..." His mother struggled to make herself stop to put down a few plastic bags before rushing over to him. Lars couldn't help a quiet laugh.

"How was work?" "Oh, the usual - your dad told me you were back and you were okay, I didn't know you'd be awake, I would've left earlier..." Her eyes kept darting up and down his body, as urgently as if he'd narrowly escaped death just moments ago. Finally, her gaze settled on his face and she lit up in a smile. "How are you?"

"I'm okay. This is all just from, you know, the island. Did Dad tell you about the island thing?"

"He mentioned that, yes," she said. She squeezed his hand. "You're really okay?"

"Yeah." He shifted in the chair and gave her a smile. "Just tired."

She sat with Lars while he finished his tea and gave her a brief version of the events of the island. He made it a story about Sadie learning how to use a spear, and the three of them building a tent out of branches and leaves, and how he figured out how to start a fire and cook their food, and Steven carrying around a ukulele and strumming it periodically day and night, and Sadie fighting off a bloodthirsty fish, and domes of crystals sparkling in the morning sun and in the innumerable stars at night. When he couldn't think of anything else worth describing, he ended by saying they found the warp pad by luck and Steven was able to teleport them home.

"...and it was still morning then, but when we came back here it was like, midnight, so I've been asleep for, I dunno, half a day," he said. "Or, longer than that, I think. I guess I've been, y'know, behind on sleep."

"Wow," his mom laughed. "Steven is really something else. That's quite a story you have there."

"Yeah."

"I hope you got to have _some_ fun though," she said. "I know you don't get much time off..."

Lars glanced away. He would complain a lot about how often he was at work, but he didn't like to do it in front of his parents. Particularly when they'd just gotten home after working much worse jobs than he had.

"It's okay. It was fine sometimes. We weren't...once we figured out how to eat, we didn't have much else to worry about."

"Good. It's good to know you were all okay. We were all worried," she said quietly. Lars looked back at her and saw how exhausted she looked, with darkness under her eyes and strands of hair falling out of a messy ponytail. He knew that even when she worked overnight, she was usually home sooner than this. He got more pangs of guilt for making her work even harder to cover the paycheck he'd lost.

"Mom, you should go to bed," he said, making himself sound as casual and content as he could to convince her.

"Oh, I'm fine," she said, waving it off. "I haven't seen you in ages."

"I'm not working today, I'll still be here later. Seriously, go to bed."

She heaved a sigh and gave him a weary smile.

"Fine, I will. You're so terrible," she joked, "You don't even want to see your own mother. Unbelievable." As she stood up from the table, she kissed his forehead with another squeeze of his hand and a soft "I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Lars?"

He looked up at her.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Lars hesitated for a moment. He hadn't intended to tell his dad something and then keep it from his mom, and it felt kind of bad, because he could always tell that sometimes it stressed his parents out that he would never share things about his life with them, the way other kids did, the way you were supposed to. Evidently, his dad had withheld the more personal parts of what Lars had said the night before, and Lars couldn't deny that he was grateful for that, because he really did not want to talk about it anymore. But he still didn't want to tell his mom he was perfectly okay. Not when he'd told his dad all about how he wasn't. He knew it wasn't fair and he hoped his dad wouldn't tell her about the rest of the previous night's events. He figured he caused enough problems for his parents without making his mom feel inadequate or having his dad's lie by omission generate marital strife or anything.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."

She lingered by his side for one moment more, then turned away to put her keys on the cabinet.

"Alright. Well, let me know if you change your mind, okay?"

"Okay, Mom."

Lars pressed his hands against the warm ceramic of his cup and listened to his mom go down the hall and move around in her room until the footsteps stopped and he knew she was finally lying down to rest for the day. He finished drinking the tea while watching distant seagulls gliding by the window. As the minutes passed he kept having the instinct to pull out his phone and was reminded that he couldn't send or get texts or even pass the time by looking through pictures. Loneliness was growing and he wanted to be around someone, but he knew that without his phone, he wasn't likely to talk to anyone that day besides his parents. That was one thing that had been different. Normally he had to all but demand attention sometimes because he knew that otherwise his presence could be easily overlooked. But on the island, he'd been needed. He could be certain that even if he kept completely to himself, they would be aware of him, and they'd notice if he was gone. He missed that, now that he was back in Beach City and nobody would know the difference if he had a phone or not, if he was in town or thousands of miles away.

Lars exhaled through his teeth and took his cup to the sink and then went to his room to get changed. He could tell that he was going to do one of two things: lie down on his bed and try to fall asleep again, or make himself go outside and be around people, even if they were all strangers and he didn't speak a word to any of them. He pulled on an old pair of jeans, pushed his feet into an even older pair of shoes, and went out the front door before he could reconsider the "sleeping all day" option.

Everything outside was still imbued with the storm. The breeze that hit his face smelled like rain, the clouds were still heavily layered, and the asphalt and pavement were darkened with dampness. It was still and quiet. The conditions weren't exactly ideal for an invigorating social experience. Lars could hear a car driving by somewhere, and further down the street there was a single person walking a tiny dog. Lars put his hands in his pockets and started off in the general direction of the beach.

He finally came across signs of life when he emerged from the rows of uniform houses to a wider street filled with small shops and restaurants. It was an area of town where Beach City residents mingled with vacationers, the former usually visiting the post office and library or stopping by for lunch, the latter going up and down the sidewalks at a leisurely pace, talking and looking in windows. Lars began slowly walking going the sidewalk as well. Despite how long he'd been in Beach City, he actually had never been in most of the buildings along this particular street. He didn't exactly have the income to frequent the majority of the restaurants, half of which had seafood entrees that he'd have to work for three or four hours to afford. He spent most of his time at home, the Big Donut, or the boardwalk. The only building here that he was familiar with at all was the library, so when he saw a sandwich board that said he could get lunch for five dollars, he figured it was as good a bet as any, and went inside.

The place had a few families with little kids, a few people who seemed to be there alone like he was. He went up to the counter and ordered two of the cheapest things on the menu: coffee and a bowl of the soup of the day, plain tomato. There was a row of little tables along the wall opposite the door and he took the furthest one, so his back was to a corner and he was facing the rest of the room. One person sitting down at a booth seemed to do a subdued double-take at Lars, but he ignored it, and everyone else seemed to ignore him, thankfully. All he needed was the presence of other people without the expectation of actually interacting with them. He was glad that the only person he knew at all was Harold Smiley, who appeared to be taking his food to go and hadn't noticed Lars anyways. Lars recalled how Mr. Smiley always dropped by the Big Donut at least twice a week, and always treated them with basic respect and even kindness, unlike a lot of other customers. Lars wondered vaguely if Mr. Smiley had noticed that the usual employees had been gone and if he'd thought about them. He supposed there wasn't a big difference in the experience of buying a donut whether he or someone else was the one serving it.

Lars looked out the window at people passing by and kicked the wall until his order came up. He brought the food to the table before he remembered that he could never drink black coffee without a lot of sugar and cream, which he figured was supposed to be embarrassing, but he almost never had it in the first place. Even though he always woke up exhausted, he couldn't afford to buy coffee every morning, and would be too tired to bother waking up earlier to make the trip to get it. Instead he'd sleep till there was just enough time for him to get ready for work and make it to the Big Donut to open it with Sadie. The walk to work usually woke him up sufficiently anyways, but sometimes he'd take one of the plastic cups in the shop and drink some caffeinated soda from their machine. Sadie would always joke that she was going to turn him in for theft and get him both fired and arrested, and then she'd hand him a cup and tell him what she wanted from the fountain, too.

After stirring a few packets of sugar and half-and-half into the drink and waiting for both it and the soup to cool down a little, Lars cringed internally at the sight of several large groups of people walking in right after each other. He couldn't help seeing everything from the perspective of the employees. One good thing about the Big Donut was that their only really busy times of day where early in the morning and later in the evening, when everyone was on their way to work and then coming back home. It was usually manageable, but even seeing a rush at someone else's job was filling him with dread. Rushes were stressful and annoying and people would be mad at him from the start simply because they'd had to wait in line, as if he had anything to do with that. Difficult and rude customers were not uncommon at all, especially when they were busy, and when the store was finally empty again Lars would still be nervous and irritable for at least an hour afterwards.

He tried to ignore it and just focus on his lunch. The soup was good but not especially better than what he could make himself. It was refreshing just to have lots of other humans around again, and at the same time, kind of weird. He sort of wished he had someone familiar to eat lunch with. He wished he was the kind of person with loads of friendly acquaintances who he'd run into all the time, so when they were in the same restaurant, they'd just come up to him and ask him how it was going and say they hadn't seen him in how long, and they could talk about nothing and share a meal. He was miles away from being that kind of person, though. The people who would go over to him if they met by chance were Sadie and Steven, and, if he was lucky, Buck or Jenny or Sour Cream.

It started raining again. Lars took his time with his meal and saw a decent number of people come in and out of the place. Lots of locals were taking their orders to go, but a few sat down to eat, and Lars felt a bit of fondness for the other people who were eating alone, as if they were doing it as a personal favor to him so he wouldn't have to be too self-conscious. As the orders slowed down, he could hear the workers behind the counter and in the kitchen talking to each other, and occasionally there'd be a burst of laughter. He felt himself kicking against the wall harder and faster but didn't bother stopping himself. Everything reminding him of work was reminding him of Sadie; of struggling through a busy workday with her, of taking turns letting each other sleep in the back room, of turning away to smile to himself when he succeeded in making her laugh. Every pleasant memory of working with her was making him more nervous about trying to talk with her later. He couldn't convince himself to be optimistic about it. He didn't even really want to do it: he was still angry about it all, which made him sad too, which made him angrier. But the only thing he could think of that would be worse than talking to her was the idea of seeing her at work again before they'd talked at all.

He realized the beat of his shoe against the wall had gotten kind of loud, so that people walking by his table were glancing at him. He set both feet hard on the ground, drank the rest of his coffee in one go, picked up the dishes and put them by the trash can, and went back outside. He took a few deep breaths. The air tasted like saltwater and the falling rain. The drops were light and scattered, nothing like the storm of the night before. He impulsively headed towards the beach and tried to think of what to do about Sadie.

_Don't make such a big deal out of it.  
_  
He could feel the grit of sand between his shoes and the sidewalk. The crash of waves was faintly audible and growing louder as he walked, along with the whistling cries and laughs of gulls.

_Stop making a big deal out of it,_ he told himself again, but his brain apparently wasn't listening. He was annoyed that after sleeping it off and everything, all it took was a couple of hours for him to be consumed with stress again.

He stepped onto the boardwalk, strode right across, and walked carefully over the sand towards the grey ocean. He stopped to take off his shoes and continued more steadily to the slight slope of the beach that was smoothed by the tide sliding back and forth along it. He edged closer to the water and rolled the legs of his jeans up around his knees. The sound of the crashing surf mixed with the quiet rain and the distant voices of the few vacationers who refused to let the weather keep them from the beach. Lars dug his toes into the sand when he saw a swelling wave coming towards him, and sure enough, it swept up the shore to his feet and beyond, swirling up around his ankles. The water was pleasantly cool and it felt good against his bare skin. He tried to remember the last time he'd visited the beach for fun. Not since late last summer, almost a year ago. He liked it sometimes, but he was usually too tired, or didn't have anyone to go with, or didn't feel like getting soaked and covered in sand, or had seen enough of the ocean from staring at it from behind the counter at work. He hadn't realized how much he missed it till his lungs were filled with the smell of saltwater and foam was clinging to the hair on his damp legs.

Lars stared out at the grey horizon to watch a far-off boat sail by, letting the breeze blow his hair in his face. The seawater washing in was picking up sand and depositing it on his feet as it went back out, slowly burying them as if it was trying to plant him there by his roots. Thunder resounded as a low vibration in the sky. An occasional seagull flew by with a croaking laugh. Lars closed his eyes and matched his inhales and exhales with the rhythm of the ocean.

Something hit against the side of his knee and he gasped in shock and whipped around to face it.

"_God_ what the f -"  
A child who couldn't be older than three had placed a hand on his leg and was grinning up at him. Lars bit his lip to silence himself and met their gaze, which for some reason made the kid laugh, and stumble, and grab on to his leg again for balance. Lars clenched his fists in an attempt to steady his heartbeat and managed to give the kid half a smile. His knee twitched under the squeeze of tiny hands.

"Luca!" came a small voice from further down the beach. Lars didn't move or speak as he watched another child run towards them, clad in bright yellow and waving a plastic shovel overhead. An unexpectedly large roll of surf made Lars stumble backwards, and he reflexively reached down to catch the kid attached to his leg.

"Luca! Hi!" The other kid had caught up to them, panting and covered in sand. "Hi. I'm his big sister," she explained to Lars. "Hi," Lars said back. Both kids were looking at him and smiling as though on the verge of laughter.

"We're finding seashells," the older kid told him. "Look." She lifted a bucket up for Lars to see, filled mostly with sand, with a few smoothed pieces of shells mixed in. Luca turned from Lars to dip a hand in the bucket. Lars glanced around, trying to see if anyone they belonged to was nearby.

"I'm Vivi."

Lars nodded. He looked down at her and she looked back up at him with that same laughing expression, squinting against the ocean breeze.

"Oh," Lars said after a few seconds, realizing what she was waiting for. "My name's Lars." He took a step back and waited for the kids to move on. But Luca had dropped their bucket in the sand and, after falling down in his effort to pick it back up, began grabbing fistfuls of the wet sand and throwing them behind him. Vivi joined him by scraping at the sand with the shovel.

Lars had barely turned back to look at the sea when Vivi let out a shout. He looked back to see her pointing directly at him and he froze in bewilderment.

"Lars!" she cried, astonished. "Your ears! They have holes in them!"

Lars laughed before he could stop himself.

"Yeah, I know," he said, partially fighting a smile. Luca had stopped throwing sand to look at him too. "They're supposed to. I did it on purpose."

"How come?!"

Lars shrugged.

"Cuz I wanted to."

"Wow..." The kids stared at him in awe. Vivi touched her own ears as if trying to imagine what gauging them would be like.

"Lah," Luca said suddenly. He tried again. "Lahs!"

"Uh huh?" Lars knelt down by them.

"Does it hurt?"

Lars smiled and shook his head.

"Nah. They don't hurt."

"Wow," Vivi said again. Lars breathed out a laugh and traced his fingers along the surface of the sand.

"You wanna dig a hole here?" he asked.

"When we, um, dig, if we find..." Luca struggled with the word. "Sells."

"Uh-huh. Cool." Vivi and Luca set to work methodically forming a little pit in the sand. Lars watched the waves as they dug and occasionally picked up some of the excavated sand and piled it beside his shoes. The dark clouds lingered, but the faint thunder and rain were almost gone, and a few more people were wandering the beach now. Lars tried to just take in everything around him: the quiet chatter of the focused kids beside him. The distant sound of music and laughter. The coarse sand beneath his feet. The salty air carrying the scent of the ocean. The croak of a gull. The white of the waves rolling in.

The unmistakeable explosion from far off to their left.

Lars jolted in surprise, as always, and then glanced towards Steven's home to check that nothing was happening that was going to kill them. There was no sign of gems, monsters, debris hurtling through the air, people running for their lives. After a few seconds of stillness he was satisfied and turned back towards the horizon.  
Vivi and Luca were both looking at the source of the sound with mild concern, Vivi rising to her feet and gripping the shovel in her hand.

"Oh, yeah, you don't have to worry about that," Lars said, gesturing towards the cliff. "Stuff like that happens here a lot." He tended to forget that visitors to Beach City didn't always know about what was normal for the town.

"What was that noise?" Luca asked.

Lars shrugged.

"I dunno. This kid I know lives over there and his family's kinda magic, so they do stuff like that sometimes. Blow things up, and junk. It's usually fine."

"Luca! Vivi! Over here!"

Lars glanced up to see a concerned parent beckoning them over to the boardwalk. Vivi waved at Lars with a sand-covered hand and Luca gave him a cheerful "bye!" before they ran off, yelling to the adult and each other.

Lars leaned over to fill the hole back in and smooth it over. Then he picked his shoes up and walked to the tide's edge to dip his hand in the water and clean off the sand.

Lars heard a smaller echo of an explosion and looked back over in time to catch a blue flash of light, followed by the faint yet unmistakable sound of Steven's laughter.

If Steven had already completely recovered from the time spent on the island, it wouldn't have surprised Lars at all. Steven was wildly resilient by any standards, especially for a kid. He didn't even seem bothered by the threat of death. He was already having fun doing whatever it was that he did, while Lars was still weighed down by a single excursion that probably really was a vacation from Steven's perspective.

Lars could readily admit to himself that he was a little envious. He knew he didn't actually want anything close to Steven's life, with all its weirdness and danger, but he wanted some of that confidence Steven had, some of the happiness, some of the -

_Hang on._

He wanted some of the -

_That's what I need to remember. It doesn't matter.  
_  
Lars stared towards Steven's home, then towards Beach City. Half-formed thoughts were giving him a defiant sort of inspiration. He envied Steven's constant sense of purpose, his attitude that every little thing he did was important -

He envied that the things Steven did _were_ important -

How many times Lars knew Steven saved the town - how many times Steven said they saved the world - how many times Steven had protected Lars from danger?

Look at all of the adventures Steven had, that he told them about so often, look at all of them and pick a random one, and right there, with that one thing, that little kid had accomplished more than Lars had with his whole life.

Lars was taking a whole day to work up the nerve just to go talk to someone. He was so overwhelmed with the fear of losing his friend or his temper that he almost felt sick. But all he needed was a different perspective. One that said he didn't really have much control over anything. One that said if everything went wrong, they'd both get over it, that in the end it didn't matter what happened here. His impact on anything wasn't going to have any lasting effect. Sadie had herself and her life in far better order than he did, and she could adapt to whatever she needed to, including being let down by some coworker. And however badly Lars managed to fuck himself up, well, it was all a drop in the ocean. A grain of sand on the beach that washes out with the tide.

_It feels so big that you can't even begin to face it, but it just_ feels_ that way. That's just how_ you _feel. But really, in reality, to everyone who isn't you - it's tiny. It's not a big deal. Let whatever's going to happen happen and just keep going_.

_Just please calm down.  
_  
He sighed, looked up at the sky, and set off for Sadie's house.

Already his legs were getting tired, so he numbered his steps in groups of ten to keep up a rhythm. He ignored the rising sense of dread and the panicky corner of his brain that was running through all possible worst case scenarios. He told his thoughts to shut up and calm down. He kept reminding himself that no matter what happened, in hardly any time at all he'd be heading home again and he wouldn't be worrying about this anymore. And even if he was still feeling bad - no matter how bad he felt, or for how long - none of this stuff really _mattered.  
_  
He was still counting steps _(nine, ten, one, two, three)_ when he reached Sadie's doorstep, and knocked twice before he could hesitate. Took a step back, looked at the lightening grey clouds, intertwined his fingers behind his back, breathed out long and slow. He could feel his heartbeat as he heard someone inside the small house move towards the door. He kept looking at the horizon and shifted his weight back over his right leg. He squeezed his hands together as the door opened, waited a fraction of a second before looking over -

"Hey there." Sadie's mom was smiling at him. "Welcome back, huh?"

"Oh, yeah." Lars gave a laugh. "I guess we were gone long enough, huh."

"I'll say." She had already opened the door wide and was waving him in. Lars stepped up through the doorway.

"Sorry for like, not - y'know, having shoes on," he said, lifting them slightly in his hand and nudging a foot against his bared lower leg. "I felt like going to the beach and my feet still haven't dried off all the way and I just never, like, uh..." he trailed off.

"Lord, as if I would care if you show up here without shoes," she said, rolling her eyes at him.

He shrugged.

"Well, I guess you're here to see Sadie?" She put a hand on her hip.

Lars paused a moment. He usually found it comfortable to interact with her because she always had this tendency to be direct. Now, though, he wished she would've taken a little more time to get to the point. It had occurred to him that he had no idea what he was going to say when he actually saw Sadie again.

"She told me some about what happened."

"What?" Lars said quickly.

"I mean, I have to say, I'm impressed. I'm not sure I'd know what to do if you dropped me on an island, but you all got back in one piece. Good job on that."

"Oh, yeah...thanks."

"I didn't know you could cook, either."

"I mean, I guess. I don't really know what I'm doing but I guess I'm okay."

"She said you were more than okay."

Lars could feel himself blushing at the compliments. He shrugged and looked away.

"I dunno," he said. "Maybe? I don't know."

After a slight pause he glanced back up at Sadie's mom, and saw her looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite identify. Then she gave a quick smile and shook her head at him.

"I'll check and see if she's awake," she told him, turning away. "She comes home in the middle of the night, you know, and couldn't get to sleep till maybe a few hours ago. Been really sore, too, and she's got all kinds of bruises. She never really said where they all came from. I don't suppose _you'd_ tell me what that's all about?" She looked back over her shoulder at him.

Lars hesitated. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. It wasn't like the explanation made Sadie look bad, or look anything short of amazing, but maybe she didn't want her mom to know if she hadn't already told her. But Lars did kind of want to tell her. She was always nice to him and seemed to actually like him, and he was afraid that any story he'd try to come up with would be transparently false and - he bit his lip as he realized that if her mom thought he was lying about what happened, she might think he was lying because it was his fault Sadie was beat up, and -

_It wasn't._

"Um," he said. "It's kind of a...weird story."

Sadie's mom sighed.

"If you could get past that, that'd be great, Lars," she said. "Because my daughter comes home hurt and I'd love if anyone who knows would give any decent explanation why."

Lars tightened his hands into fists and tried to come up with what to say.

"I mean..."

_She did it cuz of me but I was gonna be killed cuz of her because she - but it wasn't my fault because -_

_You didn't hurt her._

_Because if she didn't - if she hadn't - they could just have gone home if she hadn't -_

He started speaking before he could get too worked up.

"It's just, you know the kind of stuff we get around here - right before we got off the island, it turned out there was this big thing, this huge monster thing was chasing us, and Sadie...killed it. I mean, she fought it, and it was really big, and that's why she..." He trailed off and shrugged again. "It fought her and she won, but it...it was tough. I mean, like I said, it's a weird story. It was magic stuff. But...that's why."

Sadie's mom looked at him with confusion.

"She definitely didn't mention that. A monster? Really?"

"Yeah, it was this huge, loud...thing. It was after us and Sadie fought it off."

"Well I'm not sure why she didn't want to talk about _that,_" she said with a scoff. "Lord, you all are just full of surprises then, huh? You're some culinary genius, Sadie's fending off creatures with her bare hands -"

"And a spear," Lars added.

"Oh, a spear, well, that's not so impressive after all. Probably didn't tell me because she was too embarrassed, then."

Lars was laughing again.

"Yeah, probably."

"I swear..." She put a hand across her eyes and shook her head. "I don't know what to do with any of you. Just wait there a second and I'll see if she's up."

The mild sense of ease he had gained started falling back into tension.

"Thanks."

He was left alone in their kitchen, and he leaned against a counter, staring at the arcing line of color of his reflection in the faucet over the sink. He didn't know what to expect from Sadie or himself. He wasn't even sure what he wanted or hoped would happen.

_Don't get so nervous,_ he told himself firmly. _This isn't a big deal. Don't be stupid.  
_  
He was just here to - to do what? Tell her how he was feeling.

_What am I supposed to say? How do I even say that's what I want to talk about?_

_If I start to actually tell her what I'm actually thinking - I don't know how I'm supposed to keep from yelling or - I don't know how I'm going to keep from -  
_  
_Really, fucking leave if you start to cry. Leave if you even feel it coming._

_Seriously, just climb out the window before she sees you crying again.  
_  
His heartbeat jumped at quiet movement from a few rooms over. He started twisting the hem of his shirt in his fingers.

Their fluffy grey cat came trotting into the room and Lars immediately crouched over the floor, holding his hand out to him and clicking his tongue.

"Snap. Here, sweetie," he whispered, and the cat eagerly trotted over to get his chin scratched and back stroked. Lars loved him and Sadie's mom would always tease that he was spoiling Snap when Lars would spend ages petting the cat on his lap. And sure enough, Snap climbed up across Lars and perched his front paws on Lars's shoulder, rubbing his nose against Lars's cheek.

"Oh my god," Lars stifled a giggle. "C'mere."

He gathered the cat up in his arms, running his hands along the soft fur and enjoying how quickly the volume of purring was increasing.

He heard someone walking through the house towards them and when Snap jumped out of his arms he knew it was because Snap was running to Sadie. He just had time to stand up and turn towards the doorway when she walked through it. Their eyes met immediately. She seemed to have no strong reaction to seeing him and he hoped he'd given the same impression.

She looked tired, and her bruises had grown more dramatic since he'd seen her. But all other remnants of the island were gone. Her hair was untangled and shone in the light. She'd washed all of the dirt off her skin and was wearing striped pajama pants and a sweatshirt.

"Hey, Lars," she said.

"Hey," he returned. He looked away as she stooped to pet the cat rubbing against her legs. He knew he was already blushing. He couldn't help it. It already felt weird just to see her in usual, everyday surroundings. There was no way to see Sadie again and pretend like everything was normal, like he was ignoring everything that had happened.

"Do you want something to drink?" Sadie's mom had followed her into the room. Lars tried to look like he was as calm and casual as he was hoping to be.

"No, thanks, I'm okay," Sadie answered quietly. "I'm just still a little sore."

"Is your arm feeling alright?"

"Yeah."

Lars glanced back over to see that they'd replaced his impromptu denim bandaging with a white gauzy wrap, held in place around her arm with light blue medical tape. It was bizarre to think about the evening he spent tending to her arm. He supposed it was only about a day ago, but it all felt weirdly distant. He tried not to panic at his rising emotion as that night ran through his head. He told himself he was always bad at staying calm, and that it would be okay.

He wondered if everything that had happened then would be cleared away as easily as that; if it could all just be washed off in the shower or unwound from Sadie's arm or eased away with a few days of rest.

"Are you okay?"

It was a few seconds before Lars looked up to see that Sadie's mom was talking to him. The slight concern in her tone made him afraid his expression was giving him away.

"Oh," he said, breath catching momentarily, pushing his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, um..." He shrugged and let a smile flicker across his face. "I'm good."

"Alright, well..." Sadie's mom glanced momentarily between him and Sadie. "I'll leave you to it, then. I'll be upstairs if you need anything, hon," she added to Sadie, then went down the hall, leaving them alone in the room. Lars pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed them tightly over his chest.

"You been okay?" he mumbled, staring at the floor before dragging his gaze up to Sadie.

She was sitting on a stool, leaning forward with her arms propping her up against the countertop. She was looking back at him through hair falling around her eyes. Her exhaustion was unmistakable.

"Sure," she said. "I guess I'm doing as good as you can expect. You saw what happened."

Lars squeezed his arms in his hands.

"Yeah. I did." He looked back down at the floor, watching Snap lie contentedly in the corner of the room.

Everything was silent. Lars struggled to choose what he should say.

"Why'd you come over here?" Sadie asked. He looked back up in surprise. For a few seconds they held eye contact without speaking.

"...I wanted to talk to you," Lars said.

"Okay." Sadie straightened her posture and waited. Lars flushed but refused to look away. He knew she was testing him a little, calling his bluff, but he really wanted to at least try to say some of the things he was thinking. If things had been like they were back on the island, it would be the easiest thing in the world to spill his heart out to her. He'd felt like he could've told her anything, even stuff he'd never shared with another soul. And that was why he now found it harder to speak to her than ever.

"I guess I just really -" He cut off and exhaled heavily and drew his arms closer around himself.

_There's no point in fucking around._

_Just say what you mean to say, for once._

"How come you - you didn't -" He bit down lightly on his tongue.

_You're supposed to tell her why you feel angry, huh? Then it's a good thing you're already feeling that way again right now._

"Why didn't you tell me?" he said to the ceiling light.

Sadie turned away and sighed.

"Why didn't you tell me when -" Lars tightened his grip on his arms to stop his hands from shaking. "That morning - before we left the island - how come you didn't just _tell_ me?"

"Lars -" Sadie briefly pressed her unbandaged hand to her forehead. "I didn't... Look, do we have to talk about this right now?"

Lars felt a chill run through him.

"What?" His trepidation started giving way to indignation. "Do - what does that even _mean?_"

"It means I'm really tired and we just got back, and a lot of stuff happened and you just left out of nowhere and now you're here out of nowhere, and I just...I just want some more time."

"_Sadie,_" he said in disbelief. She frowned down at the countertop. "We gotta do this _now._ I can't just - come back later and - and -"

"Why not? Why can't we talk later?"

"I can't just do this whenever, I can't do this again, I don't even want to _be_ here -"

"So why are you here?! Why would you even see me if you don't want to be here?" Sadie threw a hand up in the air.

The littlest things could make Lars feel defensive. This was more than enough to back him up against a wall.

"You know that's not how it is," he said through his teeth. "I didn't want to come here because I was afraid of - of _this._"

"I didn't start this, Lars." Sadie glared at him.

"_Start_ this -" he echoed in disbelief. "I'm not _trying_ to fight, I just want to talk!"

Sadie's anger seemed to abate a little and she put her face in her hands and drew a long inhale, and let it out in a slow sigh. Lars shoved his hands back in his pockets and stood still, bristling.

"Like, okay, yeah, I'm fuckin' upset. But I just wanna talk," he said again.

Sadie hugged her arms to herself and looked away.

"Look...I just, I don't get it," Lars said. He tried working up the nerve to speak honestly. Sadie didn't move. "I just - I -"

An exhale spilled from him. He started to become aware of a tapping sound and realized he'd been kicking the heel of his foot against the wooden drawers behind him. He firmly planted both feet under him.

_Come on come on come on_

"I don't understand what you wanted from me." He looked at the floor as he said it. He couldn't bring himself to watch for a reaction.

She didn't respond.

"Like...I don't know what you were trying to do, you know?" he continued. "I mean, the whole time we were there, like...what was even supposed to happen?"

"Lars -" Sadie started. He lifted his head again. Her expression was strained. Her hands worked into fists, thumbs rubbing against her fingers. She chewed on her bottom lip and sighed.

"I don't get it," Lars repeated quietly. "I mean, sure, it's not like everything about the island was bad and it was...some stuff was really good, but like..." He was starting to shiver again.

"It was really fuckin' scary, not knowing if we'd ever make it off the island, y'know?" he said. "And I really thought - like, the whole time - the whole time..." He struggled to force the words out. "I really thought you were feeling the same way."

_Don't cry.  
_  
"It's just that it's so fucking weird like...the whole time we were there, everything I thought turned out to be wrong? And - and I dunno, I feel so - I don't know how to talk, I don't know what to do about it, I don't know what any of this was supposed to mean anymore. It's like..."

"Lars -"

"_No,_ it's like..." He twisted some hair through his fingers and then drew his nails down the side of his head. "I don't get what was wrong. What I was supposed to do. I don't get why you did that and why you didn't just tell me what was going on when we were - when I - when I was -"

He covered his face momentarily.

"I just can't stop feeling bad, okay, it just...it feels really fucking awful," he confessed. "And I think we gotta talk about it or it's gonna keep being awful."

He linked his shaking hands together and finally dared to look at her.

Sadie looked back at him with a hint of a wince, as if she was in pain. They held eye contact and Lars waited for her to say something.

After a moment Sadie's shoulders dropped and she drew a long breath, looking down towards Lars's stomach instead of his face.

"Oh, Lars..." Her voice was small. She squeezed her eyes shut and brushed her hair out of her face and sighed and sighed.

"I..." she began waveringly. "I really don't think I can do this today, Lars."

His heart was pounding.

"I'm sorry," she said, her cheeks and forehead tinged pink. "I just need some time to think first."

Lars tried not to panic. He tried to convince himself that they really could talk about this later and that he'd done more than just embarrass himself further by being here. He tried to stop his knees from shaking.

"It's just that I'm not ready, okay?" she said.

"When'll you be ready?" Lars flushed at his automatic response.

"I don't know, but just...not right now."

Lars fought to wrap his mind around all of this. If managing to talk openly wasn't going to work then he really had no idea what else to do.

_Don't cry. Stop it.  
_  
"Lars, c'mon..."

He hated when his face gave him away. He was choking back his temper which was flaring at himself and Sadie and everybody and he was further alarmed to feel tears pooling in his eyes.

His breath hitched in fear and he went for the emergency brake - he curled his fingers and dug his nails into his upper arm as hard as he could without actually piercing skin. The sharp bite of pain was enough to diffuse the sensation that he was right on the verge of crying. He waited a few seconds and blinked and to his relief his tears faded away without spilling down his cheeks He covered his mouth with his hand and stared at the cat still curled up on the floor.

"I don't know what to do, then," he mumbled. "I mean, I still..." He stopped before his voice could shudder. He took a few deep breaths. "I still like being around you, I just can't - it's too confusing, y'know, I just wanna...I just wanna talk about this, Sadie. Please."

Sadie rubbed idly at her bandage.

"I know," she said quietly. "Not now."

Lars's face burned and he dropped his head, unable to risk looking at her anymore.

Neither of them spoke or moved.

"Okay." His voice cracked and was crumbling apart by the second. "Sorry," he whispered.

To hide himself further he knelt down to the socks and shoes he'd put beside him on the floor and took great care in working them back on his feet. He took advantage of being out of sight by lightly wiping the back of his wrist across his eyes and under his nose. Then he stood up again, hands on the countertop that Sadie was sitting at.

"I should go then, probably," he said softly. His mouth twitched halfway to a smile. "I'd say I'll text you, but y'know."

She gave a slight smile in return.

"I'll...see you later," Lars said. "Hope you feel better soon, yeah?" He shrugged one shoulder and put his hands back in his pockets and took a couple of steps backwards towards the front door.

Sadie nodded and hugged her arms around herself and looked away.

Lars turned on his heel and counted the steps til he reached the door and walked back outside. The sudden openness of space was almost dizzying and he stood in place on their doorstep, catching his breath, working out the strangling threat of crying. The breeze swept around him again as if to welcome him back and it was pushing him along as he set out again.

He made the walk home in something of a daze. His thoughts were buzzing and racing but whenever he tried to narrow in on them he didn't make out any conscious words. He couldn't focus on any of the sights and sounds around him and it seemed like barely five minutes had gone by when he found himself standing in front of his door. He could hear his parents talking and laughing as he went inside. They went quiet as they realized he was back and when he walked into the kitchen he saw them sitting on the couch in the next room, apparently working on a newspaper crossword puzzle.

"Lars, hey," his dad said.

"Where'd you go off to?" his mom said.

"I went out for lunch, and a walk," Lars answered, "and then I saw Sadie. I think I gotta be in my room for a minute before I can talk, okay?"

His parents looked at each other and then back at him.

"Sure," his mom said.

"I'll be back. I just need a second," he promised.

"Are you alright?" his dad asked. Lars gave a shrug and a smile before deciding on a casual "yeah."

He went over to his room and closed the door and found the plain spiral notebook he kept on his desk. He took a heavy black marker, ripped a page out of the notebook, and started drawing a large circle in the middle. He kept circling the black lines around the paper, making them overlap and intersect, the circle growing wider until it touched the edges of the sheet and he started spiraling the lines in towards the center. He kept going until there was barely any space left on the paper and then he gripped it in both hands and carefully tore it in half down the middle. He took those halves and tore them as well. When he had thoroughly shredded the paper he pulled a new sheet out of the notebook and started over, this time moving the marker rapidly back and forth in sharp, jagged lines, focusing intently on the scribbles as he pushed the marker into the paper and then ripping it all to pieces again.

He repeated the process several times and then abandoned the marker and just tore up a few pages. When he felt like he was done he put his face in his hands and breathed slowly through his fingers. A minute or two later he stood up and brushed the tiny scraps of paper into a pile, gathered them up, then crushed them in his fist and threw them away. He picked up the marker and turned it over in his hand a few times, then pulled up one side of his shirt and hooked a thumb in the waistband of his jeans and drew a tiny star over the crest of his hipbone. He considered it for a moment and then added a few stars around it.

Satisfied that the urge had sufficiently passed, he capped the marker and put it and the notebook back in the corner of his desk. He smoothed his shirt back down and stood in front of the mirror leaning against the wall and looked at himself. He gave his reflection an apologetic smile and shrug.

He felt more tired than anything as he went back out to his parents.

"Hey," he said as he shut his bedroom door behind him. "What's up?"

"Ah, not much," his mom answered. "We were just talking about what to make to eat."

"Neither of us is working tonight," his dad said - Lars immediately wondered if it was really one of those coincidental times that they were both off at once or if one or both of them had called out of work for him - "and we figured we could make something, or even go out somewhere. Endless possibilities."

"We could even _order pizza,_" his mom whispered dramatically, raising her eyebrows. "I mean, if we really wanted to go all out, we could rent a movie too."

Lars shrugged and leaned back against the wall.

"Whatever you guys feel like doing is cool," he said. "I dunno, I was thinking about starting back at work tomorrow, so I guess I might have to go to bed early if I'm supposed to open..."

His dad laughed.

"What is it with you wanting so bad to go to work all of a sudden? You haven't even been here a full day yet, Lars."

"Ugh, I know, but I might as well just go back. It's not like I have any other plans."

"Lars, it's fine, you can take another day off. You look like you need the rest," his mom said. "Besides, it's too late to call in, they already know who's working tomorrow by this point. You can call tomorrow in the morning and say you can work the next day."

"Yeah, just have at least one more day off and say your parents made you do it." His dad had gotten up from the couch and was pouring himself a glass of water.

"...I guess," Lars shrugged. He didn't have the energy left to argue about anything, and he didn't particularly care if he went back to work the next morning or the next month.

"You look kinda tired, you okay?" his mom asked.

"I'm fine," he said. "I guess I am, a little bit. I've been sleeping weird. It's been a weird day. I don't know."

"How'd it go with Sadie?" his dad asked quietly as he set his glass down in the sink. Lars froze, staring down at his feet.

"Um," he said. He shrugged. He brushed the side of one foot against the other. "I dunno. Could've been worse, I guess." He gave a short laugh.

"Are you okay?" his mom asked again, her voice quieter.

Lars looked up and saw they were both watching him. He sighed with a smile.

"I'll be okay," he said. He sat down on the couch beside his mom and in a fleeting movement she reached out and brushed her hand over his. "Pizza might help though."

His parents both laughed at that and Lars laughed at them in return.

"Oh yeah, Lars -" His dad seemed to remember something and began searching the kitchen table. "Here we go. Check out what _I_ managed to do." He walked over to the couch and held something in his fist out to Lars.

Bemused, Lars followed along and put his hands out and Steven's crystals were dropped into them.

"Oh my god." Lars couldn't help laughing. His dad was notoriously bad with little things and yet had found a way to thread a thin woven cord through the crystals, making them into a proper necklace again. He lifted the necklace up so he could see it shining in the light, and he looked at his dad, and back at the necklace, and a giggle burst out of him. "Thank you, oh my god..."

"Don't even ask how long it took me to do that," his dad said with a grin.

"Seriously, don't," his mom added. "It was painful to watch. C'mon, figure out what kind of pizza you want and I'll even place the order for you." She stood up and went with his dad to the kitchen to look for the phone book.

Lars bit his lip as he gripped the necklace tight in his hands. After a moment he brought the crystals up over his head and lowered them to hang around his neck, carefully centering them on his collarbones. Their weight was familiar and comforting. He took a deep breath and lifted himself from the couch and a sudden return of the thunder made him break into a smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**(Advance notice that this chapter gets into self-destructive thoughts and actions, including self-harm and disordered eating.)**

The next day, Lars stayed home. He didn't go to work and he didn't go anywhere else, either. He woke up just as his dad was leaving for work. His mom had already been gone for a couple of hours. After his dad told him to call if he needed anything and went out the front door, Lars was alone in the house.

He made himself a bowl of cereal, which was about three times as much as he usually ate for breakfast, if he ate anything at all. He used to almost never eat in the mornings at all, but eventually he started trying to make himself eat at least a little bit.

_Lars was working and he hadn't eaten anything that day or the night before, and they'd gotten a delivery of supplies and he was putting the boxes on shelves. Sadie had come in the back room to get a sleeve of foam cups, and Lars was lifting a box overhead, and it wasn't very heavy, but he suddenly felt dizzy and all the strength left his arms and his sense of balance careened sharply out of calibration. _

_He barely managed to keep the box from falling onto himself by bringing it forward just enough so that it dropped on the floor in front of him. For a moment his ears rang and his vision faded out, and he stumbled backwards, feeling himself bump against something, unable to tell if he was going to fall. He brought a hand to his face and squeezed his eyes shut as the static in his head crescendoed. Then slowly, slowly, it began to clear up. He became aware of something holding him steady, and looked down to see Sadie beside him with one hand against the small of his back and the other on his waist._

_"Whoa, whoa, you okay?" he realized she was saying. "Hang on - "_

_Lars reached out and put his hands on the table next to them. He could keep himself upright again but he still felt light-headed and weak. Breathing heavily, he lowered himself into a chair and Sadie let go of him._

_"Seriously, Lars, are you okay? What's happening?" _

_"No, I'm okay, I just - feel weird, it's going away, just give me a minute..."_

_Soon enough he was feeling a lot more normal and he told her so. _

_"What was that all about, though?" she asked. "Are you sick?"_

_"I don't think so. I feel kind of okay now."_

_"You don't look so great. What, are you dehydrated or something?"_

_"I don't think so - " He paused for a few deep breaths. "I drank something just like an hour ago..."_

_"Hmm...do you need food? When'd you last eat?"_

_"Uh...shit, that might be it."_

_"What, have you not eaten anything today?"_

_"Nah, I forgot."_

_"God, Lars, eat something before you hurt yourself," Sadie said._

_And then he had a donut that had been messed up anyway - the wrong kind of frosting - and it was way too sweet to be the first thing he ate in almost 24 hours and so then he actually did feel sick, and left it half uneaten while he miserably waited out the feeling of nausea. Sadie told him to get something from the freezer so he wouldn't die, and he complained about having to spend money and she told him with some annoyance that with his employee discount, the most expensive anything would be was maybe three dollars. So he grudgingly ate a fruit popsicle he got for fifty-seven cents._

He'd only eat in the morning if he was going to work, to avoid any further embarrassing incidents. And maybe once a week he'd eat something from home. All other days he would just do what he'd done originally and buy something cheap when he got to work. All the same, sometimes he wouldn't feel like doing even that.

Lars put his dishes in the sink, and tried to think of what to do next, and couldn't come up with anything. He tried to watch TV but nothing interesting was on, so he turned it off again but stayed sitting on the couch. After a minute he lay down on it and stared at the ceiling. He rolled over to face the back of the couch and covered his eyes with his arm and was asleep again a few minutes later.

He stayed there, waking up a few times and going back to sleep, until the early afternoon. Then he wandered from room to room, doing small tasks like washing his bowl from that morning or watering plants, thinking about Sadie and wishing he wasn't. He'd focus on something else, only to get the feeling that he was forgetting something urgently important, and then have to remember everything and force himself to ignore it all over again.

His frustration remained quiet though, and unlike the day before, he embraced solitude. He listened to music for an hour while lying in the middle of the kitchen floor. He played a game he hadn't touched in months, able to give the level he was stuck on his full and uninterrupted attention. He sat outside their front door, listening to music some more, then read through the newspaper, then played through more of the game.

He was alright.

His parents got home within an hour of each other and Lars made them all dinner. It wasn't anything complicated, but it was something to do, and it felt like an accomplishment. He listened to his parents tell about their day and converse with each other, and they didn't press him to talk more beyond the occasional sentences he contributed, so he didn't.

Later that evening he watched a movie on TV, and felt okay. He took a long shower.

He was sick of feeling so bad. He was so done with being so restricted by it. He told himself that tomorrow he was just going to be done with all of it. He'd had enough.

He went to bed early that night. For a long time he lay staring up at the ceiling. He tried to think of something to be happy about, and he closed his eyes and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders when he gave up.

The next day, his crash was almost immediate.

He woke up all at once, took a few seconds to adjust, and then he felt like shit. He couldn't convince himself to get out of bed, or even move. It took him ten minutes of internal debate to get up and go to the bathroom, and then he ended up going right back into his room and collapsing onto his bed. Waves of emotion kept coming from nowhere, beating at him. He was feeling too much and he pushed his face against his pillow and was crying within seconds.

He clenched his fists and breathed deep and tried to calm himself down. A minute later it started to pay off and he wiped his eyes with a blanket.

And then it immediately came rushing back, stronger than before.

"Fuck," he managed as his breaths came in halting gasps. He wiped his hands along his jawline to catch his tears and sobbed.

He hated days when he cried on and off. He couldn't go outside, he didn't want to risk seeing someone he knew like this, nobody knew how often things drove him to tears. He even hid a lot of it from his parents, pretending to be sleeping, pretending he just needed a shower when he really just had to cry for a minute. Sadie was the only person who had a real idea of how easily he cried.

_The first time Sadie saw him cry, she'd made him do it._

_It wasn't long after they'd met. They'd been working together about a month, and one day was just especially bad. It seemed like anything that could go wrong, did. The shipment coming in was late and they were low on plain, chocolate-frosted donuts, and they ran out early in the morning, and people on their way to work were mad and their air of hostility was wearing Lars down when he hadn't been in that good of a mood to begin with._

_The soda fountain broke just before the lunch rush and Lars had to take all orders on his own for a while as Sadie worked to try to fix it. They were running low on one dollar bills and coins and everyone wanted to pay with a twenty. Someone tracked in mud, everyone was leaving used napkins and straws scattered everywhere, they found out someone had left a mostly-full cup of coffee on a table when Steven came in and accidentally knocked it all over the floor._

_The truck delivering their order arrived in the middle of an afternoon rush. Most of the boxes were heavy, a lot contained frozen items that they had to rush to put away in every spare moment between customers. Lars's hands began to sting from the cold, he scraped his wrist along the corner of a package, his back and arms ached from shelving boxes. Time was dragging by and even Sadie was in a bad mood and Lars was way more eager to leave than usual._

_He was sitting on the table in the back room, surrounded by everything that he still had to put away, tired and stressed and angry at a rude customer from a few minutes earlier. He didn't move when he heard Sadie walking by behind him, didn't even look up, until she spoke with obvious exasperation._

_"Lars, come on, work," she said sharply. "Don't make me do this all by myself."_

_Lars's temper spiked and a stream of responses came to him simultaneously (how can you say that like I haven't been working you've BEEN here you've SEEN it I don't know why you won't take a five minute break even once but I want to and I'm allowed to and why can't you just ask me I've been treated like shit all day by everyone who comes in here and why do you have to talk to me the same way) but he didn't say any of it, he just snapped at her to leave him alone._

_The next thing he knew Sadie was standing right beside him, and her voice was quiet and startlingly harsh._

_"Don't you dare," she said with such severity that he flinched. "This is why everyone hates you, Lars, you know that? You're just a jerk." She turned away and shoved a box in a cabinet._

_Lots of people had said worse to him in his life, but Sadie was usually so patient and she always said everything with such genuine feeling behind it that this was like a slap in the face and he couldn't speak. His eyes and throat burned as quickly as if it was a reflex and he was just as helpless to stop it. His vision blurred with tears until he blinked and felt them slide down his face. He wanted desperately to hide from Sadie but was momentarily frozen by the fear that if he moved even an inch, she might turn to look at him and see. _

_So of course in the next second she turned right around to face him and even though he immediately swiveled away, he'd seen her expression go from anger to surprise and knew that she knew and it made him feel so much worse._

_He stood up, he went to go out front again - he'd rather stay in the back but it would be a little better for a stranger to witness this disaster instead of Sadie - but Sadie took his arm in a firm hold. _

_"No," he said loudly, and began to pull away._

_"Lars, stop, I'm sorry, I'm sorry - " Sadie said. "Stay here."_

_"No, it's fine, I just - I do this sometimes, okay?" A quiver crept into his voice. "It's fine, just let me go a minute." He hated when it happened like this, everyone thought he was trying to make people feel sorry for him, when really if he had control over it, this would never happen -_

_"Lars, please." She released his arm but her voice rooted him in place, she was so nice and honest in such a real way that when she was upset like this, he couldn't bring himself to do anything that might make it worse. "Please, I'm sorry, just wait. Please."_

_He stayed, but kept his head turned away from her, staring at the corner of the room._

_"Don't worry about it," he said, "This just happens a lot. I'm just tired." He went over to a box and opened a pack of napkins and started wiping at his eyes and nose._

_"No, I'm really - I'm sorry," Sadie repeated, almost whispering. _

_"Oh my god, stop, it's not your fault," he said. He was feeling both angry and ashamed and at once wanted to lash out and to apologize. "It's not you - " (it was) "It's just this whole fucking day, it's everything - " (it was) "This just happens when -" He stopped to pull out a new napkin and dragged it over his face. "Just gimme a minute."_

_Neither of them spoke. Sadie hesitated, then slowly walked out of the back room to the front of the store. He covered his face and lowered himself into a chair to let himself cry as much as he needed to. He was drawing a shaky breath when the door to the room suddenly opened and gave him a jolt of shock. _

_He mumbled a stream of swears into his hands as Sadie walked back over and sat down across the table from him. _

_"Hey," she said. "I really mean it, I'm sorry. I know you're not just upset because of me, but I'm sorry anyways. I didn't mean it."_

_He gave a short laugh._

_"I'm not that stupid," he said. "I already know that nobody here likes me. You don't have to apologize."_

_"I didn't mean to be so - I wasn't trying to make you cry. I shouldn't have done that, okay?"_

_"It's fine, you were mad at me, I was mad at you, whatever. I just want to finish this shit and get out of here."_

_"Well, yeah, okay, I was kind of mad at you - "_

_"Yeah, so, whatever, I get it. It's fine, I'm fine." He sighed and wiped away the tracks from his tears and stood up. "I can get all these fucking boxes put away if you just wanna finish up the front," he said. For emphasis he lifted a box up, tore it open, and began to pull out the smaller boxes of cleaning supplies._

_"Okay," she agreed quietly, and went to continue cleaning the front of the store, and to his relief, Lars got to be alone for a while. Even better, nothing much happened and hardly any customers came in for the rest of the day. Sadie locked the front door at the exact moment that they closed and barely five minutes later they were pulling on their coats and leaving out the back. _

_Lars started walking off when a "hey" from Sadie made him stop and turn around._

_"Hope tomorrow's better, right?" she asked with a smile._

_"Yeah." He got out a bit of a smile in return._

Lars felt terrible. He'd cried for about ten minutes and when he finally stopped he didn't feel any better at all. He couldn't stand this, but it was happening anyway.

He wished desperately that things were normal with Sadie. On days like these, when he couldn't think of anything he could do to make things seem better, sometimes he could just hang out with her. Sometimes he'd be able to relax when they were together, sometimes he'd end up admitting he wasn't doing well and they would talk a little. Whatever happened, it was okay.

He hated that his thoughts couldn't stray from Sadie and that there was nothing he could do, either to stop thinking about her or to fix anything between them. There was no way he could try talking to her again. He would be completely humiliated if she told him again that she didn't want to talk yet. He could never force himself to risk havng to endure that kind of embarrassment.

He was afraid that she was never going to be ready. He was afraid she would never bring it up first. He wanted so badly to believe that they could find a way to be comfortable together without having to ignore the island and pretend it was nonexistent.

He didn't know what she wanted from him then, he didn't know what she wanted from him now, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know if she was just relieved that it was over or if she was glad any of it had happened, if she was only upset at him or herself as well, if she was angry at him or just angry about what happened -

_It wasn't like they didn't argue, it wasn't like he'd never seen her mad at him before, but it took a long time before he ever saw her really lose her temper._

_Everything came out of nowhere. A single customer was in the store late that evening and had bought a cup of coffee, and Lars was taking the payment while Sadie wiped down the glass of the display case behind him. Lars was taking a few extra seconds to count the money the customer had given him - he'd barely gotten any sleep the night before and now at the end of the day, he was exhausted, and it was hard for him to process even the basic arithmatic of adding up coins in his head._

_The customer was clearly already annoyed that Lars was going so slowly, but when they suddenly decided they wanted different change and replaced one of the dollars with a bunch of extra coins, it completely threw off Lars's tenuous sense of how much money to give back. He was momentarily still, staring at the coins in his hand, struggling to remember the total and to add up the new coins and figure out what the new amount of change should be._

_It didn't help much when the customer lost patience and informed him in an intensely rude tone what the correct change was, speaking the amount slowly and loudly as though Lars was a three year-old. Lars held himself back from responding and betraying how pissed off he was, though he couldn't hear Sadie behind him anymore. He pushed the computations through his mind to confirm the correct change, then pulled the coins from the register drawer and dropped them into the customer's hand, who gave the most sarcastic "thank you" possible._

_And Lars pushed the drawer closed and if he'd done it an instant later he might have missed it - just as the customer pocketed the change, they muttered softly under their breath. It was barely audible but Lars could make out out both words crystal clear: a swear, then a slur. _

_It sent a chill through every nerve in his body and froze him in place. The breath he was drawing was stopped in his throat. The words echoed in his head, growing louder with each repetition._

_And then Sadie drowned them out._

_He hadn't seen her pass by him but suddenly she was standing on the other side of the counter, right beside the customer._

_"Get out of this store NOW," she growled, cheeks pink and eyes sparking with rage. "Get out and don't EVER show your face in here again, or so help me I will THROW you out MYSELF."_

_"Whoa, hey - " The customer had taken a few steps back, caught completely off guard by her ferocity. _

_"LEAVE." Her voice filled the space and left no room for argument. She stepped forward and actually raised a clenched fist and in a matter of seconds the shop was once again empty of anyone but the two of them._

_Lars tried to look like he wasn't shaking from stress. He thought he should thank Sadie but was too embarrassed to make a sound._

_"What a fucking jackass," Sadie muttered as she came back around to continue cleaning the display case, and hearing those words from her actually made him start to feel better._

Lars tried not to panic over the fact that Sadie hadn't talked to him since he'd visited almost two whole days ago. It's just because you don't have a phone, he told himself, though at the same moment he was comparing this to all his other past experiences and trying to figure out if he was losing a friend again.

Precious few people liked Lars for very long, and so far he'd never had a friendship that hadn't eventually ended. Though he struggled to make friends in the first place, the real hurdle was always trying to be someone that others would want to be around for any period of time. They'd like him up until he slipped up and ended up showing the repulsive parts of his personality - his moodiness, his terrible social skills, his anxiety, his irritability, his temper - and then it was only a matter of time. At best, people got bored of him, and worst case scenario, he got mad at them or they got mad at him or both.

It shook him up badly every time a friendship was shattered and it happened over and over until he wished he would stop bringing it on himself. He'd tell himself to stop expecting people to like him, to stop wanting people to like him, but then someone he liked would give him attention or he'd meet someone whose attention he wanted. Every time, he wanted it to happen so badly. Every time, he convinced himself that it would be different. And then, just like always, he'd become aware of a shakiness between them, and it would scare him, and eventually that fear would be what he got from the relationship instead of anything positive, and the relationship would unravel - or else something would tear it apart first. When the tear came even before Lars had time to notice a friendship going south, he'd get to spend days or weeks afterwards realizing in retrospect everything that had been going wrong while he thought things were fine. That was even worse - at least when he saw it coming, he wouldn't be surprised when the end came around, and he couldn't be disappointed in himself. But when it happened out of nowhere, the shock made it much more painful, and he'd have to confront the knowledge that he was so bad at being a friend that sometimes he didn't even notice when he was fucking things up.

Now he ran through every disastrously ended friendship in his memory, comparing them to what was happening now, desperate to get started feeling the pain in advance if things went the same way with Sadie. It always happens like this, he told himself. I don't want this to happen with Sadie - it ALWAYS happens like this - but what if this time it doesn't? - you tell yourself that every time and every time it happens like this -

It wasn't just that Sadie had been his friend for longer than usual. He had never really tried to be her friend, like he usually had to. Their friendship had just happened - he hadn't even expected her to like him at all when they first met, and didn't make any particular effort to seem nicer or more interesting or generally better than he actually was. Work didn't exactly bring out the best in him and all those ugly elements to his personality kept cropping up, and he assumed she would eventually get sick of him, but she didn't. And then one day, he reached that moment: he wanted her to like him, and he wanted to like her. And suddenly he was so amazed and grateful that she'd been around him when he couldn't carry a conversation, when he made mistakes all day, when he got in a bad mood, when his temper flared up until they fought - she'd been there for all of it and she still liked him.

Sadie was his best friend. She was probably the best friend he'd ever had. He knew if he lost this now it was going to hurt like hell, no matter how much he tried to brace himself for it.

Lars crawled back onto his bed, burying himself in his blankets and squeezing his eyes closed and trying to shut off his thoughts and go back to sleep for a while. The clamor in his head only grew more overwhelming and he sat up. He needed a distraction but he couldn't think of anything in the world he actually wanted to do. He forced himself to travel the tiny distance from his bed to his desk and got out the notebook and a pen. He needed to vent some of the building energy inside him, and he needed to do it fast.

_Lars firmly believed this was the stupidest mistake he'd ever made or it was the worst luck he ever had. Maybe it had to be both for something this shitty to happen._

_Lars was already having a bad month when he had a really awful week. It wasn't just the disheartening kind of awful, or the inconveniencing kind - it made him feel like absolute shit about everything, including himself. _

_One day he just reached a new low. For no particular reason his mood had been especially bad from the moment he woke up, and it just got worse and worse as the day went on. He'd had an awful day in school and was barely dragging himself along when he got to the last period. He was a bit relieved that they were going to be able to leave soon and that he never had to worry much about this subject since he usually did okay in it._

_So then when they got the previous day's test back and Lars discovered that although he'd been confident he had done pretty well, what he'd done was actually a spectacular failure. He was stunned and couldn't focus at all for the rest of the class. When the day was over and he was walking home he couldn't think of anything but how everything always seemed to get worse, how his grades were always getting worse, how he always seemed to feel worse and do worse and be worse. _

_He was trying to keep relatively calm and ignore it all but he'd been ignoring it for so long already that this extra push was getting to be way, way too much and it demanded that he let it out somehow. He was passing through a parking lot behind an old shop when he stopped and fell back against the wall of the building, ignoring the jarring shove of his back meeting the concrete. He stared up at the sky, breathing and swearing quietly to himself, trying to figure out what in the world he could do. _

_He dragged an arm up the wall to put his hand in his pocket and felt a jagged piece of concrete cut against his bare skin. He sucked in air through his teeth and jerked his arm up to look at the damage - a straight, reddened line ran along the side of his arm, but he didn't seem to be bleeding._

_Then came the realization that, for a moment, the pain had taken all his attention and he'd stopped feeling like shit. He stared at the cut, breathing hard, then marched to the corner of the building, placed the back of his arm against it, and scrubbed his arm against the roughened stone there until it stung too much to continue. _

_Panting, he looked at his arm again. He still wasn't bleeding, but there was a patch on his arm where the skin had been rubbed raw, shining slightly like a burn. He told himself to remember to say he'd accidentally scraped himself if anyone asked, and told himself that not only did it help him feel better, but he deserved to get beat up a little._

_His reprieve lasted for a little while until that night, when he was alone in his room and really starting to feel terrible again. It grew to the point that he was feeling so bad it was unmanageable, he couldn't stand it anymore, he hated every second and would give anything just to stop this feeling - _

_He suddenly wondered if this was why people cut themselves. The thought came out of nowhere - he didn't know much about it - he didn't know anyone who did it, or at least, he didn't think he did. But what he had done to his arm...wasn't that at least similar? He wondered if it could at least help, and sitting on his bed, shaking and on the verge of tears, he couldn't stop wondering._

_When he started crying in earnest, he pushed himself up from the bed and started searching through the drawers of his desk. A minute later he found the handful of supplies he'd gotten to take home from an art class, and among them, a little plastic case of blades. They'd originally been for knives they'd used - under careful supervision - to cut patterns and shapes out of paper and Lars hadn't even intended to take the container of replacement blades home until he discovered them in his pocket one day. He pulled one out now - they were small, sharp, razor thin metal triangles barely an inch long - and stared at it for a long time._

_He didn't know how he was supposed to do this, if there was actually a way you were supposed to do it. He was torn between his instinctive fear of being badly cut and his desperation to stop himself from suffering through these feelings any longer. Eventually he lifted the blade to his upper arm, the same arm that he'd already damaged earlier that day. He tried to steady his hand and blinked out tears and brought the metal point against the skin. Applying even a tiny amount of pressure brought a bite of pain that cut through the storm in his head. _

_He bit his lip and dragged the blade across his skin before he could think about it. He hadn't cut very deep - a few tiny droplets of blood were forming - but it stung like a papercut and made him feel like he could breathe freely again._

_He had several more lines under the initial one before he went to the bathroom and washed the blade and his arm. He put a bandage over his cuts and put on a shirt that covered it up - it wasn't going to be as easy to think of a way to explain how he'd hurt the inside of his upper arm and nothing else. He still felt like shit, he still agonized about every aspect of life, he still wanted to be left alone for the rest of his life while he also wished more than anything for friends, he still went to bed early so that he wouldn't have to be conscious any longer and he still cried, miserable and furious._

_And then only a month or so later he'd made the stupidest mistake in the world. _

_His mood hadn't been improving much, so a few times a week he'd add another cut or two to his arm. And one evening he was at home and it was about an hour after he'd cut himself and his mom had just come back from work and it woke him up from a nap. He pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and wandered out of his room to say hi. _

_He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes and arched his back in a stretch._

_"Lars." His mom spoke with such urgency that Lars jumped, assuming something dangerous was happening. _

_"What?" he asked, heartrate increasing. She just stared back at him._

_"Did you..." she finally spoke after a pause. "Did you do that?"_

_It felt like ice in his veins, realizing exactly where she was looking - the top of his left arm - his left arm where he'd only just remembered he was wearing a shirt with sleeves too short to cover his scars - his rows of scars where he'd just added a new one that stood out plainly against his skin. He couldn't move, couldn't do anything but wait to see what she would do next._

_"Lars?" It was too much, her voice was too loud, she looked almost too angry. "Lars. Did you do that to yourself?"_

_"It's - " He was having enough trouble forming a sentence in his mind, much less making himself say anything. "I - I'm - "_

_"Lars." He wished she would stop saying his name like that. "Lars, why did you do this? How long have you - " She was walking towards him, he felt trapped against the wall. All he could think was how none of this would be happening if he'd just remembered to put on a shirt with longer sleeves._

_His mom took his hand and pulled his arm further out, plainly exposing the cuts. Lars was humiliated and he was scared and he just kept wishing none of this had happened and thinking how easy it would've been to avoid - if he'd just worn a different shirt, if he'd just stayed in his room - _

_She kept asking more questions and the stress in her voice was beccoming clearer while it was harder and harder for him to even process what she was saying._

_"I don't - " he said suddenly. "It's nothing can I please go to my room I'm okay don't worry about it," he said all at once._

_"How long has this been going on? Why are you doing this?" she cried, her grip tightening on his wrist._

_"It's not important, I swear," he said, and suddenly panicked and wrenched his arm away, hitting his elbow on the wall. "I - I'm gonna - I have to go to my room - please - don't - " He backed out of the room until he couldn't see or hear his mom anymore and he rushed back into the safety of his room and locked the door and sat down on the floor against it, staring at the wall._

_"Shit," he whispered. "Shit fuck shit fucking SHIT."_

_He had no idea what to do._

_He stared at nothing and clenched his fists until he heard his mom's voice again. She was still a few rooms away, he could tell, not actually talking to him - he strained to hear what she was saying, he couldn't help it, she sounded so upset. Eventually he could make out enough to tell that she must be calling his dad, telling him what had happened. _

_He yanked his shirt off and pulled on one of his long-sleeved undershirts, then shoved a different t-shirt on over it. He couldn't stand being talked about. He couldn't think of what to say to his parents - there wasn't anything he could say to make it better, they were going to want to know everything, and he just wanted privacy about this, to be left alone. But even if he explained that he wasn't trying to hurt himself, it was about trying to stop himself from hurting - he'd just have to admit that he felt uncontrollably miserable so often that he'd trade one kind of pain for another._

_He almost laughed because he felt bad enough that, under normal circumstances, he'd give himself another cut._

_He didn't move until ages later when his dad open the front door. In seconds, he heard both his parents talking to each other, low and quiet but intense. He shook and felt sick and he needed to get away, he needed to feel like none of this was happening, he needed to think about something else as soon as he possibly could - _

_He grabbed his phone from the floor beside him and steadied his hands enough that he could type out a text._

_"hey sadie are you busy" he sent. He put the phone back on the floor beside him and watched the screen, listening to the tone of his parents' voices as they grew more upset. He tried to be patient, to wait it out like he usually would, but less than a minute later he tried again._

_"if youre not busy is it ok to just talk for a minute? like its not a big deal i just need to talk to somebody"_

_He was desperate enough to be a little honest about how urgent this was. He could start to understand a few of the things his parents were saying, their voices had risen a little from their initial secretive level. His mom's voice got just loud enough that he could hear the words clearly. He gasped and shut his eyes and dug his fingers into his knees. _

_" - we barely have enough money to - I don't have that insurance I used to, it's not covered - I mean, I don't think we can afford to get him a therapist... What if - what if he needs a prescription? How could we afford it? Even if I found a-another job that pays some more, and I don't even know if that would be enough..." There was a pause before she said in a broken voice: "My god, our kid - " _

_Lars couldn't hear either of his parents anymore, until he was horrified by the sound of his mom softly crying. He swore and grabbed his phone._

_"please im sorry but if you get this please just text me about something. it can be anything i dont care. like turn your day into a 300 pg novel that would be fine"_

_He covered his ears and drew his knees to his chest and swore repeatedly to himself._

_His ringtone went off and his phone buzzed against his floor. He snatched it up and accepted the call before it could make any more noise, and barely had time to register the contact name before bringing the phone to his ear._

_"Hey, Sadie," he said quietly._

_"Hey, you okay?" she said through a little static._

_"Haha, yeah, I'm okay," he said, already feeling a wave of comfort just from hearing her voice. She sounded calm and familiar and listening to her was like everything was normal. "Well - " he started again. "No. I mean, I'm okay, but I'm not. You know?"_

_"I don't really know exactly," she said, with a laugh that was a little nervous. "You're not hurt or anything, are you? I was trying to figure out what your texts mean but I wasn't sure, so I just called - "_

_"Yeah, sorry, I guess I didn't make a lot of sense, huh," he said with a smile. "I was just..." He trailed off and sighed. "I don't know."_

_"...What's going on?" Sadie asked._

_"I don't really - I don't want to like. I don't want to talk about it, I just - I just wanted to try and like, have a regular conversation, y'know? Like there's just this shit going on and I was kinda freaking out and I couldn't think of what else to do."_

_"Lars, are you sure you're okay? I'm actually, um...do you want me to come over?"_

_"Uh - " Lars couldn't imagine trying to be in the house with his parents in the current situation. "I - I mean, it would be awesome to hang out, but - we couldn't really do that here right now."_

_"Okay, well...you wanna come over to my house?"_

_He thought about being able to get away and it was only a second before he told her that would be amazing. _

_"Okay," she laughed. "I might be a minute before I can get over there, if that's okay."_

_"Yeah, that's fine, oh my god Sadie I owe you one - "_

_"Ha, more like you owe me ANOTHER one. It's fine, though. Be there in a sec, okay?"_

_"Okay. Thank you."_

_"Alright...bye."_

_"Bye."_

_He shoved his phone in his pocket and put on shoes and was so grateful it wasn't a school night and he didn't have that to worry about, too. He picked up a book and lay down on his bed and started reading, just to pass the time without having to think about what was happening for another second._

_His attempt to ignore everything was interrupted by a knock on his door and his dad quietly saying his name._

_"...Yeah?" Lars answered hesitantly._

_"Could we talk to you for a minute?"_

_Lars sighed and dragged himself out of bed with the knowledge that there was no way out of this. He walked slowly out of his room and down the hall into the kitchen. His parents were sitting at the table, looking calm yet concerned. He grudgingly pulled out a chair and sat down across from them, refusing to look at them._

_"What's going on, Lars?" his dad asked._

_"Nothing," he answered quickly. "This really isn't important."_

_"It IS important," his mom said. "You're hurting yourself. That's more important than anything."_

_Lars turned his head further away, frustrated. When he had a day so bad that he felt sick, nobody noticed. When stress made his hands shake and his temper fray, nobody felt like he needed help. When he felt so lifeless and unhappy that he was exhausted all the time and just wanted to sleep all day, the reception was far from sympathetic. So why was it that when he tried to help himself in a small way and gain any amount of control, that was what got noticed, that was what people actually cared about?_

_"How long has this been going on?" his dad said._

_"Ugh, not long, just a few weeks," Lars sighed. "Look, it's not that big of a deal. I'm sorry, okay?"_

_"Lars - "_

_He wrenched his sleeve up his arm and turned his scars to the light._

_"Look," he said sharply. "They're not even deep. I get hurt worse at work."_

_"That's - " His mom's voice was strained and she shared a glance with his dad. Lars grimaced and pulled his sleeve back down. "It's good that you weren't doing something more dangerous, but you still shouldn't have been doing this at all."_

_"Fine. If I promise to stop cutting myself, can we please just not talk about this anymore?"_

_"Lars - "_

_A knock on the front door came like an answered prayer. He let his dad answer it as if he didn't know who it was and heard Sadie issue a cheerful greeting and ask if he was around. He stood up and walked over behind his dad to mouth "thank you" to her. _

_"Lars and I had plans to hang out tonight," Sadie said._

_His dad hesitated, glanced at him, glanced at his mom. _

_"Okay," he said finally, stepping back to let Lars walk past him._

_Lars told his parents he'd see them tomorrow and quickly closed the front door behind him and hurried down the steps to the sidewalk with Sadie keeping pace right beside him._

_"God," he said. "Thank you thank you thank you."_

_Sadie laughed._

_"No problem," she said. "Seriously though, what's up?"_

_He groaned, slowing his walk as they got a couple of blocks away from his house._

_"Can we just pretend nothing's up? At least for right now."_

_"If you say so," she answered. "Then...wanna hear something funny that happened to me today?"_

_He scoffed._

_"Uh, fuck yeah I do."_

_Sadie's house was warm and comfortable and her mom seemed glad to see him even though she couldn't have had more than a half hour's notice that he was going to be there. Sadie was as great at keeping up conversation as she always was and they just spent hours talking about whatever random shit they felt like. Neither of them actually had to say that he was going to stay the night. At some point Sadie just brought over a pillow and a blanket so he could sleep on their couch. Lars sank into the comfort of it all and felt more relaxed and content than he had in ages._

_It was a little after midnight when out of nowhere Lars started telling Sadie about what had happened. He had to pause a few times but he told her the truth and he was only a little bit afraid, but mostly he trusted her, mostly it felt right, mostly he actually wanted her to know. He kept his eyes on the ceiling while telling the story and she listened in silence._

_"Wow," she said after he finished. "That...I mean, that sucks." She gave a quiet laugh._

_Lars clenched the blanket in his hands, intensely relieved that her reaction was so calm. She asked him if he was feeling better now that he'd gotten out of his house, and said that she was sorry his parents had found out, and said that she was sorry he'd been feeling so bad lately. She never actually said anything about him cutting himself - that it was wrong or stupid or horrifying or anything at all. She just talked about the way he was feeling. And he didn't know how badly he wanted that until he was getting it and suddenly he was crying a bit, and then Sadie was telling her own stories about low points and then he was crying really noticeably and that made her cry, too, and they talked for a long time afterwards just all about problems and feelings and fears and life._

_Sadie ended up sleeping in the reclining chair beside the couch where he lay, and Lars woke up in the middle of the night and was struck by the memory of the previous day's events and was completely alarmed but then he looked over and saw Sadie curled up under a blanket in the darkness, and he remembered the parts of the day that included her, and he felt okay._

_Beginning the day alongside Sadie at her house was nicer than he could describe. Being someplace new with a friend instead of lying alone in the same dark room as always was powerfully refreshing. He was actually kind of in a good mood, even after he remembered what was going on at home. He at least felt safe from all of it while he was here, but even the thought of going back home didn't scare him too badly. He almost felt like he could handle it._

_So when Lars went home again later that day, he actually called his parents and asked when they would get back, and told them he'd be there too. He was nervous, but he held on to the knowledge that he'd talked about this with Sadie and her reaction had been so comforting - no matter how it went with his parents, he'd still have that._

_When they finally got home, he did get a lot more nervous but he found that he could at least find his voice and get his words out evenly, something he had a lot of trouble with when he got too stressed. It was a long and difficult conversation and sometimes it was all Lars could do to force himself not to shut down._

_In the end what probably eased his parents' worries the best was when Lars told them he'd spent a while looking up advice for alternatives to self-harm, and said that a few of them sounded helpful to him. One of the suggestions he told them about was to take frustration out on paper, whether that meant slashing lines in ink instead of blood or just ripping up as much paper as it took to vent any destructive urges._

Lars filled another page with so many lines that they overlapped in a dark mass in the center, then tore it out. He stacked all the pages together and, taking just enough effort that he had to strain his muscles, managed to tear the group in half.

"Fuck this," he said over and over. He bit down on his lip and used a marker to cover a blank page in those same words, writing larger as his anger grew and then moving the marker over the words in scratching lines until the sheet was almost entirely black.

He didn't want to think about the fact that some days this was starting to feel inadequate. He did other things - biting down as hard as he could on what was intended to be a chew toy for small dogs, screaming profanities into his pillow, dropping to the floor to do pushups until he tired himself out. But sometimes it didn't feel like enough to dull the feelings he needed to get rid of, and those times seemed to be coming along more often than they used to.

He didn't want to have to tell his parents that he was doing worse than he could manage. He didn't want that kind of attention, he didn't want the embarrassment. He just wanted things to stop being so bad, although he didn't see how they ever would. Besides, if he told his parents about his worst points, they might think that he needed a doctor again - they still brought it up sometimes - and Lars couldn't stand the thought of exposing his most personal secrets to the scrutiny of a stranger so they could rate how crazy he was, or to be burdened with the knowledge that he was costing his parents more money than ever.

He wasn't precisely sure when he was aware that they didn't have a lot of money, or that he himself was a financial burden. Though he'd gotten used to hearing that they "couldn't afford it" a lot throughout his life, it took him a while to realize that not all families had the same experience, and though it wasn't like his parents ever told him he was costing them a lot, at some point he became aware of the fact that kids were expensive. That turned into a bit of full-fledged guilt when he was about twelve or thirteen and suddenly hordes of adults all loved to joke to his parents about how much he was going to eat now, teenage boys burn through so much more food, bet you aren't looking forward to that - and Lars would be doubly annoyed, both that these jokes were always made as though he wasn't there or couldn't understand, and because any significant additional household expense was no joke.

From then on, he was always conscious about how much he ate. Not always, but usually, he'd eat a bit less than he would if he didn't have this voice in the back of his mind reminding him of what his parents would think if they couldn't afford as much food for themselves just because he was eating more. And around that same time, his general mood and personality and disposition were beginning to worsen, followed quickly by issues with self-image and self-worth, which all united to intensify each other. He'd hate himself some days and telling himself to only eat a little bit would turn into "don't eat at all," and then he'd feel a little better both because he was punishing himself for being shitty and because he was being less shitty by costing less money.

It became something of a habit until he'd try to skip as many meals as he could throughout the day, and he'd cut out breakfast entirely, and usually try to skip lunch unless it was free at school, and even sometimes then he'd tell himself he didn't deserve it or just didn't feel like it. He supposed that might be why it didn't seem like the biggest deal in the world when he first decided to try bleeding as a coping mechanism. He'd been trying to damage himself from the inside out for a while - to little effect, though he was pretty lacking in strength. And now he'd traded cuts on his arm for these ripped up paper, and now that just wasn't doing it anymore.

He was furious that it was like he was being punished for every effort to do better - the effort would eventually fail and he'd just be left feeling as bad as he had before, with an additional garnish of crushed hope. He almost wanted to ask his parents to help him figure out how to feel a little more okay, but he didn't want them to worry or pry too much into the details of his state of mind. It wasn't actually important but they might misinterpret it as a huge deal. It wasn't like he'd ever tried to kill himself. Sure, sometimes he wondered if he might ever reach that point someday - but there wasn't any reason to panic over wondering. He'd heard enough derisive comments about idiotic teenaged angst - how all teens were agonizing over being alive and how they were just wrestling with faux deep philosophy while adults, who'd gotten past all that long ago, laughed at their stupidity. Didn't everyone question why they should keep on living? Wasn't everyone curious about what it would be like to die? Lars figured that having days where he wished he wasn't alive and nights when he wished he wouldn't wake up and was devastated when he did - it was just usual teen anguish and didn't need to be taken so seriously.

He was pretty sure, anyways. While he sat at his desk, he tried to imagine making any actual steps towards suicide, and he couldn't see himself doing it. So, no real problem.

Except that he wanted out of his life so badly that he wished he could get out of life entirely. The pain of it was suffocating.

And he knew that all this was far from only being about Sadie. He was upset about Sadie and he was upset about everything. Everything about himself, everything about his shitty existence. And being upset about Sadie too was only making it clear that without her, he couldn't come up with any way to be happy. And he knew that was awful. Shouldn't he have enough friends that he could at least always have one person around when he needed company? Shouldn't he be independent enough, strong enough, that if he didn't have Sadie around to talk to, he could think of some way to feel better? Shouldn't he be able to figure out how to function adequately on his own, even if he had no friends in the whole world?

God. He wished desperately he hadn't kissed her.

He wasn't totally clueless. He knew when he had a crush. It was hardly an unfamiliar feeling - he got nervous within seconds whenever someone cute came into the Big Donut, and that was just from being in proximity with them. If he successfully exchanged any number of words with them, he'd be reeling for the next half hour. He'd had a few fleeting crushes on friends and acquaintances from school through the years, though most of them amounted to nothing. And nowadays, Jenny and Sour Cream and Buck flustered him thoroughly more often than not. And especially Buck - Lars really had no illusions about the legitimacy of his crush on Buck, being fully aware of how cool and fun and good-looking the guy was, and having a vivid memory of a long-lasting scene from a dream in which he got to kiss him. But even though he sometimes found himself with butterflies around Buck, he had no expectation that it would go anywhere. Buck was around Sour Cream and Jenny all the time and Lars was sure he probably had loads of other equally cool friends that Lars couldn't hold a candle to.

But Sadie was an entirely different case. It wasn't like he hadn't long been aware that it would probably be convenient if the two of them got together - that was usually the way it happened in books and movies. Coworkers falling in love. The thought of being with Sadie certainly never repulsed him, but it just didn't happen and it was no big deal.

Until it kind of did happen. At least for one night. And then afterwards, he'd kind of find himself wondering if she was planning on dating anyone, or if she was even interested in that. He'd notice cute customers as he always had, and so would Sadie, but he'd notice if any of them were paying extra attention to Sadie. Still, he knew it didn't necessarily mean anything. It wasn't like he didn't already know they were close, it wasn't like he couldn't say he loved her. If he was a little bit infatuated for a while, it was nothing unusual. He tended to get a little clingy with any friends.

Sure, he eventually started to notice that it seemed like Sadie - maybe, possibly - might have some feelings for him, or at least, some level of interest. He was okay with that possibility. It wasn't like it had to fundamentally change everything between them. And it wasn't like he was going to make things awkward for either of them and try to get them to define everything. For all he knew, she was as uncertain about the particulars of her emotions as he was.

But then, the island.

That fucking island.

There was no uncertainty in his mind the moment he was hit full-force by A Crush. She was right in front of his eyes, smiling at him, and the feeling that ricocheted through his brain was intense and unmistakeable. And the thing was, he'd been considering the possibility for so long that it wasn't even a total surprise. And it wasn't like some dramatic scene where he saw her in a totally new light, or felt things he'd never felt before - she looked exactly the same to him as ever. It was always obvious she was cute. And what he felt for her wasn't some alien sensation - it was more like experiencing a retrospective of all the affection he'd ever had for her in the past, feeling a little bit of it all at once, with a clearer understanding of what it was.

It was such a crush. He was so in love with her. When he went to sleep with his arm around her, he didn't feel nervous or awkward at all. He just knew how much he liked to be around her, and how comfortable he was with her.

He couldn't even remember consciously deciding to kiss her. He just did it, like it was an instinct. And her, kissing him back - her body touching his, his touching hers -

It felt so bad when he found out. All that comfort he'd been feeling around her, all that trust, all that unfamiliar and wonderful happiness - all of it had been based on a lie and shattered in his face. The fact that she could've done any of it to him in the first place - but the fact that she'd continued the lie, throughout everything - while it became so obvious that he liked her, she must have noticed, she had to have noticed during the kiss -

Lars hated having this stupid crush. This stupid, teenage crush. It sure wasn't making him happy any longer. He didn't know if he was supposed to be open about it, or hide it, or try to destroy it. He didn't want another thing that would just make him miserable.

What kept hurting was that he still wanted her to like him back.

He knew it was stupid. Everything about Sadie was attractive - her face, her eyes, her body, her voice, her hair, her laugh, the way she blushed, the way the summer sun dusted her shoulders with freckles. Lars knew he was average at best, and probably leaning towards the unattractive end of that spectrum. Sadie was smart and capable and strong and talented and it seemed like he was always learning something new about her that blew him away. Lars wasn't particularly good at anything and didn't like doing anything either, and he was pretty sure the closest he would ever come to impressing anyone was failing to disappoint them as much as they might expect. Sadie had a great personality, even with her flaws. Lars was pretty sure that his personality was nothing but his flaws.

There was no way she could possibly demean herself enough to want to date him, of all people. Even if they did see each other, wouldn't he just be aware that the only reason she wans't with someone else was because he'd happened to get together with her sooner?

If anyone got close enough to him - if anyone saw enough of his truest self - they'd find out what he already knew: that he was complete shit, that he'd fucked up everything so badly that he wasn't even sure he could say he was a real person. He'd gotten enough feedback from other people to know that to believe he deserved anything good was a delusion. He knew that even though he was doing his best, he was still a shitty person, he was still a drain on other people, he still had nothing to offer but anger and misery. He just couldn't do any better, and Sadie's best was miles ahead of his, and he had nothing more to offer her, and why in the world would she like him -

Lars cried for a full hour.

When his parents got home, he was exhausted. He was a little glad not to be entirely alone any longer, but now he found it taxing to be the focus of their attention. He kept asserting that he was just tired. He just wanted all this to be over.

After they'd all eaten, Lars used the landline phone to call in and say he'd be at work tomorrow to open the Big Donut.

He took a long, hot shower. He made himself a hot cup of tea and drank it slowly, sitting in his pajamas in dim lighting. He listened to calm, quiet music with his eyes closed. He laid down on his bed and ran his fingers lightly through his hair, over the back and sides of his head, letting it relax him. He fell asleep hours before he usually did.

When he woke up to his alarm in the morning, he got up before he even had time to feel anything. He took another shower just to put himself into a routine. He was determined to do this. He had to go back to work eventually and it might as well be today. He used his own anger at himself and everything else to numb his own emotions.

When he got to the Big Donut, Sadie wasn't there. He worked with a couple of people he barely knew, had only seen a couple of times before. He kept to the back room and did all of the work there, and in exchange his coworkers took care of the front of the store, serving customers. He barely had to speak to anyone all day. When he went home, he didn't feel like he was technically in a better place, but he figured it at least looked better that he was going back to work.

The next day, Sadie still wasn't there. It was already feeling more familiar to be in the Big Donut - he relaxed a little, and was a bit more of the disgruntled employee he usually was. A few people who were regular enough to recognize him welcomed him back, and it was kind of nice to have been noticed, but he couldn't pretend he was ever glad to be back at this job.

Lars heard that Sadie was going to be coming back in the next day when a manager called to tell them about it. He didn't know how to feel.

He mentioned it to his parents that night. It was the first time he'd spoken again about the aftereffects of the island. His dad asked him later, privately, if he was okay. Lars shrugged.

He was tempted to get to work extra early so that she wouldn't get there before him, but he decided to just do everything normally. It was the best thing he could think to do.

It turned out to be an average day. They worked together as they usually did, they handled everything fine, there were no major problems.

From when she greeted him to when they left at the end of the day, Sadie acted fine around him. She didn't avoid him, she didn't seem tired of him, she didn't seem upset with him. And she never brought up his request to talk about what had happened to them.

Lars went home, drained a pen of all its ink, and covered the surface of his desk in shredded pieces of paper.


	4. Chapter 4

Lars decided that he had to figure out how to live without Sadie. They'd slipped easily back into their usual routine at work and there was no real problem with that. He knew he couldn't do anything if she didn't want to talk about the island anymore. He knew he wasn't in control of how much she considered him a friend. It wasn't even a matter of whether she actually liked him or not. Lars hadn't quite realized how reliant he was on the knowledge that he and Sadie were close until it was called into question, and even if a miracle happened and they were best friends for the rest of their lives, he knew he had to be able to be okay without her friendship.

It quickly brought him to a bigger, more intimidating challenge. He had to figure out how to love himself.

He already got that urge sometimes, if motivated by nothing more than spite for all the hatred he received from others. _Fuck if no one likes me,_ he'd think. _I'll like me. I don't care._

Passing through his room sometimes after waking up, he'd stop at the mirror, lean forward, and stare at himself. He'd meet his own glare and look at the manifestations of his exhaustion across his face, at his tangled hair, at the cut he'd gradually worked into his lip with his teeth. It was pretty obvious nobody else was going to see him like this and want to have anything to do with him. He'd have to be the one to do it.

_Your parents have to love you. You don't have friends. Even if Sadie still likes you, pretend she doesn't. Pretend you already know that someday she won't be in your life anymore._

_Nobody else loves you. Now love yourself anyway._

It wasn't coming easily.

As he started getting paid again, he felt a bit more grounded. He made enough that, setting aside some of the leftover money from each check, he'd be able to buy a new phone in a few months at most. He figured there weren't legions of people who were distraught because they couldn't text him, but he wanted the small link to other people anyway.

_Even if nobody wanted to talk to you__—_

Work was a lot more tolerable once he stopped expecting any further mention of the island, much less to get closure on it. Sadie didn't seem mad at him anymore so he figured things could be worse. They started to joke around again sometimes and, every now and then, they'd sit at the counter and talk about something.

He just had to stop himself from feeling any excessive eagerness to have a stronger bond with her. Chatting, laughing, generally enjoying each other's company—that was fine to expect. But beyond that, he knew he was always too ready to believe that he would have a really good friend, be really close to someone, be able to let go of any secrets he was keeping, be sure that he could reveal everything about himself with no fear of abandonment.

He told himself it was more than enough to just have people to hang out with. He was the one who knew everything about himself, he was the one who would never get away from himself. _Just learn how to love yourself and you'll have your best friend with you all the time._

He knew it was kind of pathetic. But he also knew it was a lot less stressful than agonizing over how other people felt about him. Just by complete chance, his bad days were easing and growing more infrequent, and he wasn't about to do anything that might bring them back. It was a relief to stop feeling like absolute death all the time.

He let his crush on Sadie continue without much concern, in part because he didn't have the energy to try dismantling it, and part because he was confident it would fade away when he wasn't paying attention if he didn't actually expect anything to happen. He could let himself enjoy the idea of being with Sadie as long as it was strictly theoretical.

Alone in his room one night, half-awake, he allowed himself to focus on the recollection of the few seconds they'd kissed. It had been messy and desperate and way too brief, but all the same, it was a thrill like nothing else he could remember. Every detail was stored in his mind with vivid accuracy—the push and pull between them, the taste of her lips and his own tears, the tiny sound she made against his mouth as she decisively took hold of his back to express her enthusiasm for the kiss and the feel of his body. The memories connected with older ones: his face in her hair and warmth shared between their skin, her hands urgently pulling him in and holding him close, his thoughts falling away as a kiss led to another and another and another.

Lars closed his eyes. With a shaky sigh, he moved the hand resting on his chest, sliding over his stomach and down between his legs.

Life was mundane. He wasn't doing anything and he didn't have any plans for anything new in the future. Just working the same boring job as ever. Steadfastly upholding an off-season oceanside town with mediocre coffee and donuts. Hours and hours and hours of his life—so many he was too afraid to add them up and calculate the days—spent sitting at the register, staring out at the ocean. Waiting for the moment he could go home, recover just in time to go to bed so he could wake up and go to work again.

Some days he'd vaguely wonder when his routine would change. He'd try to imagine where he'd be a few years in the future, and if there would be any differences, and when they would come around. Working a monotonous, soul-crushing job so that he could help his parents out and pay a couple monthly bills - that was what he did. He hated school and even though he was almost done with it, he had no idea if he really intended to go to college. It was hard to think even that far ahead when he had to focus so much on getting through every individual day. He didn't really want to go to more school, and even if he did, he couldn't think of a reason he should. He didn't have any ideas for what he should get a degree in. He wasn't good at school and he didn't exactly have any dream jobs. After he figured out that marine biology wasn't code for "hanging out with dolphins" and becoming an astronaut was actually difficult, he never developed any new goals for a future career. He didn't really think he _could _do anything if he tried.

He really hoped he wouldn't be stuck at the Big Donut for too long. But where was he going to go? A few years of low-level minimum-wage work were his only credentials. His academic record was mediocre at the very best, easily below average. He never volunteered or did anything extracurricular to impress anyone. And it probably wasn't helpful that he was always tired and in a bad mood and was uncomfortable around people a lot.

That was another gulf between him and Sadie. He didn't really know if she was trying to go to college. She never talked about it. She really never talked about that kind of thing—serious stuff like future plans and jobs and school and what she liked to do, what she wanted to do in life—and he didn't know if it was because they just never brought it up, or because she didn't like to share anything about it, or because she didn't like to share anything about it with _him__—_but it wasn't like he was trying to talk about with her either—did they even really know each other? How can you say you like her if you don't even know her and how could she like you if she doesn't really know you—

_Stop._

Sadie was so all-around smart and self-motivated and determined that Lars had no doubt she'd be great in college, if she did end up going. She'd be good at anything—any job she wanted, any level of graduate school, anything she did. And what would happen if she went off to school? She could be hours away, days away even, while he stayed behind at this awful job that would get even worse if she left. And it would take a lot of effort for her to stay in touch with him, and how could he be worth it? The only thing he'd have to tell her about was the same old boring job she'd left. And then what, how he was scared that this was where their paths diverged and they'd only grow further apart with time, that the only thing that had kept them close all along was being stuck in the same donut shop for so many days of their lives?

And it would be even harder to justify dating. Why should she keep a relationship with someone she never even saw? He could see it now—she'd finally be in an environment where it would be obvious how good she was at everything, and if she had a boyfriend who was far away in a dead-end job going nowhere fast, who wasn't good at anything like she was and who wasn't very cute or nice and spent all his time either sleeping or complaining—if anyone found that out, there wasn't a unit of time small enough to measure how long it would take them to tell her to dump him. She could find someone just as good as him who could actually be there with her every day. And really, there was _no _chance she wouldn't be able to find someone better than him at whatever school she went to. She could even be so lucky to end up with an awesome, hot, nice roommate and how in the world could he even begin to compete with that.

Even if she didn't break up with him, how could he stop himself from drowning in his own insecurity? Confronted with the mere idea that she was around better, more attractive people than him, how could he not be overwhelmed with jealousy?

_Stop it. None of this is even real._

_You'd be worth something even if Sadie didn't like you. You're worth something even if nobody liked you._

And what was supposed to happen if they did actually go out together? What in the world would be different and why would it change just because they called it "going on a date" instead of "hanging out after work"? What would dating bring them that they didn't have now? Holding hands? Saying "I love you"?

It didn't take long for Lars to start dismissing any feelings that said he wanted to date Sadie, or really, anyone. It was just another manifestation of his need for companionship, attention, affection. What he was going through with Sadie wasn't anything new. He made a friend, he got too attached, he disappointed them, they left him behind and went on with their life.

It was okay to daydream about being with someone who enjoyed his company, who thought about him when he wasn't around, who was happy to see him again, who wanted to know about him, who wasn't repulsed or ashamed or scared when he acted abnormally, who wouldn't hate him when he screwed up, who wouldn't abandon him when he lashed out, who liked to see and hear and touch him, who held him, who fucked him, who kissed him, who loved him.

It was okay to think about, but he couldn't actually attach those hopes to anyone. He wanted it too badly to avoid feeling crushed when it inevitably failed to work out. And a tragic level of desperation was just yet another unattractive trait for him.

Lars was good at making himself feel like time was passing quickly. Days accumulated into weeks. Everything stayed the same.

One tired, stormy afternoon, Lars swore quietly to himself to see Steven heading towards the door of the Big Donut. Rain was coming down by the gallon but Steven was covered by a yellow coat that went down almost to his knees. He burst through the door with a bright grin, dripping water all over the floor.

"Hey, Lars!"

Lars groaned and glared at the ceiling. With the rain keeping almost all customers away, he'd been steadily gaining a nice sense of calmness. Steven's boisterous presence was undoing it by the second. Steven's wet boots squeaked loudly against the tiles as he approached the counter and the noise was piercing in the small, quiet shop.

"What do you want?" Lars sighed heavily, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Ummm..." Steven brought a hand to his chin and furrowed his brow as he stared intently at the food in the display case.

Lars wasn't even in the mood to complain about him. He just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible so that the peace and quiet could return.

"I'll take...a donut...with strawberry frosting," Steven decided.

Lars closed his eyes and made himself stand up. Steven was counting out a pile of coins on the countertop, being such a frequent customer that Lars didn't even need to bother saying the price, which was fine by him.

"Here," Lars said flatly, holding out a plastic-wrapped donut in one hand and sliding the coins towards himself with the other.

"Thank you!" Steven said cheerfully. Lars gave a low grunt in response and proceeded to ignore the kid while he sorted the coins into the register. When he looked up, Steven was settling down with his donut at one of the tables, humming quietly.

"God," he mumbled to himself, and put his head down on the counter. The wind picked up and rain started crashing against the front windows in sheets.

"Where's Sadie?" Steven piped up.

"Break," Lars mumbled against the counter.

"Whuh?" Steven said through a mouthful of donut.

Lars grudgingly lifted his head up and repeated: "She's in the back. On break."

"Oh." Steven laughed for some reason. "Sooooo...what's up?"

"Everything you see in front of you," Lars said flatly, "is what's up."

The dulled sound of rainfall helped illustrate the lifelessness of the store as Steven looked around himself to see what Lars meant. He ate the rest of his donut thoughtfully.

Lars was fast growing irritated by Steven's presence, as it was keeping him from being able to pass the time by zoning out, and Steven kept looking at him, when he was in no mood to be looked at.

"Don't you have something to do with the gems or whatever?" he said as soon as Steven finished the last sprinkle of donut.

"They're on a mission," Steven answered. "I just got back from one with them. I had to run around a lot so I got hungry."

"Right, so you walked like half a mile in the rain to buy a donut," Lars said sarcastically.

"Heh, yeah, gotta check in!" Steven gave a thumbs up.

"Oh, yeah, you just missed it, right before you came in I saved Beach City and then I taught everybody to believe in themselves."

"Really?!"

"No," Lars snapped in annoyance. "Don't you have something else to do than hang around here all day?"

Steven gasped.

"Oh my gosh, you're right!" He slapped a hand to his forehead. "I'm meeting my dad—I'm already late—gotta go thanks Lars bye!" And in a flurry of stomping boots and a slamming door, Steven was gone.

Lars sighed and slumped forward over the counter.

He didn't hate Steven and knew that when you got down to it, he liked him. But all the same, most of the time he didn't want Steven around him. He was rarely in a mood that was compatible with Steven's exuberance and Steven could be a hell of a nuisance.

Still, he actually had a really good time being with Steven back on the island. When things had settled down into something of a routine and they were all working together well and he kind of felt like maybe, possibly, they weren't going to _immediately_ die, he warmed up to Steven. He definitely felt protective of him in that environment, knowing full well that Steven could do something stupid like fall off a cliff or be attacked by whatever the hell lived around there. And Steven could be really undeniably nice and disarmingly attentive and loving.

When they'd gone off on their own to gather leaves for the shelter they were making, Lars had slowly acclimated to Steven's presence. It was easier to do that when Steven was the only person around and Lars had no choice about it anyways. Lars was very careful about wandering through an unknown jungle, but Steven kept running ahead and crashing around until he tripped and fell into a thorny, tangled bush. He'd cried out sharply and then quickly froze, caught in the bramble. Though it took Lars only a second to reach Steven, for a moment he couldn't think of what to do, and he chastised Steven angrily, since his temper was the only thing that could conceal his panic. He slowly lowered himself, repeating "it's okay" as much for his own sake as Steven's. He took Steven's shoulders at first but immediately realized it wasn't a good enough grip to guarantee he wouldn't end up dropping Steven back against the thorns a second time. With a sharp "hold still" he knelt down, told Steven to hold on to him, and worked to get his arms around Steven's back, an inch at a time. He could feel thorns scraping his arms through his sleeves but he bit down on his tongue, finally managed to join his hands, and counted backwards from three before pulling so hard that he tumbled onto his back, Steven sprawled across his legs, still clutching his shirt.

After picking themselves up, Lars had quickly folded one arm across his chest to hide a cut on the back of his hand that was bleeding a little. With the other hand, he firmly grasped one of Steven's, telling him he'd better not run ahead like that again. Steven actually stayed quiet as they walked along, and Lars took advantage of the lack of distraction by scouring the trees around them for one with leaves that were large and sturdy enough to be useful. He was just starting to get a little afraid of how far they'd wandered in when he found a tree growing close to the ground and ordered Steven to help him pry some leaves off. Even a few leaves together were fairly heavy, so Lars tucked a couple under his arm before turning back towards their camp. Steven ran up beside him with a leaf of his own, and Lars had just turned to his own thoughts when he was startled by Steven reaching up and taking hold of his hand again. His surprise almost turned to annoyance—almost—but for once it didn't, and he smiled to himself and curled his fingers tighter around Steven's.

By the end of their time at the island he'd almost felt close to Steven. But like every other experience from the island, that felt astronomically distant now. For all he knew, it could've been just as bad an idea as anything else he'd gotten himself into at that place.

He was kind of flattered—comforted, definitely—by the knowledge that Steven liked him. But he couldn't actually depend on that as evidence that he was an okay person. He was pretty sure Steven loved everyone he ever met, no matter what they did. Saying that Steven loved you was the same as saying you existed.

Eventually Sadie emerged from the back to trade places with him, and he went to the pile of flattened boxes near the back door to lie down on it. The weather dimmed the back room and filled it with the soothing sound of rainfall. Lars rolled over to face the wall, settled in relative comfort on the layers of cardboard, and dozed off quickly.

He woke, seemingly from a dead sleep, to a hand on his shoulder and the sound of rain mixing with Sadie's voice murmuring "Hey."

"Mm," was the only response he could manage with slow, confused thoughts. He rolled over to see Sadie tell him something, he could hear it, but he failed to comprehend it at all as he struggled to remember where he was and what he was doing.

"What'd you say?" he mumbled, pushing himself further upright and rubbing his head.

"We could start working on closing up," Sadie said, "and we can get out of here pretty much right as we lock the door. It's still really slow."

She pulled something off a shelf and went back to the front. Lars sat there for a while, telling himself to stand up, and completely failing to do so. He still felt half-asleep and wanted nothing more than to go home and pass out on his bed.

He eventually dragged the broom out front and started sweeping under the tables.

"Hey," Sadie said from behind the counter. "Have you seen a box of spoons anywhere? I thought we had an extra one from last week."

"Hm. ...Nah."

Lars saw a straw wrapper wedged under a table leg and sighed heavily at it, mumbling curses as he crouched down and pulled it out.

"Are you okay?" Sadie asked.

"Ugh, just people leaving their fucking trash everywhere. Like it's actually harder for them to do this than throw it away, we've got like fifty trash cans."

"I mean, are you okay in general."

"What ? I—why?" he demanded, gripping the broom handle.

"I don't know, I was just thinking..." She gave a light laugh. "Never mind."

Lars swept the rest of the floor in silence, self-consciousness setting him on edge. Fortunately, there wasn't much they had to do to make the store ready to be closed up for the day. They actually finished everything a few minutes before official closing time, and stood behind the counter looking out at the continuing rain and occasionally checking the time. Lars glanced at Sadie beside him, zipping up a jacket over her work clothes and brushing out her hair caught under it. The last time they'd hung out had been weeks ago, when they were leaving work and she mentioned she was going to get some food at a place a couple of blocks away, and he tagged along. He wasn't ever doing anything to invite her to. His energy had been rock bottom since the island. He'd leave the house sometimes on days off, but after work he didn't feel like doing anything. But he couldn't bring himself to invite her over to his house, or to go to hers. When they did that, they always spent most of their time talking. Long conversations with Sadie were fun and comfortable and they were what made him feel the most like he had a real friend. It was one of the only times he felt like he was being himself around another person. The thought of having to feign that honesty felt almost disrespectful to it.

"Didn't you hear all the news about the storm today?" Sadie asked him, her voice quieted to match the calm emptiness around them.

"I guess," Lars answered flatly. "It's not like we never get storms."

"Did you even bring, I don't know, an umbrella or something?"

"It's just rain. It's like eighty degrees outside still."

Sadie giggled but quickly stifled it and went to lock the front door.

Lars turned on his heel and walked slowly towards the back entrance, and Sadie caught up with him by the time he reached it. They stepped out into the moderate rainfall and Lars locked the door behind them. He walked about a half pace behind Sadie, watching her work her hood up over the curls of her hair. He thought hard about anything he could talk to her about, anything he could bring up just so that they could casually chat for the few minutes they walked together after work. He couldn't think of anything interesting at all before they reached the point where their paths diverged.

"See you tomorrow, right?" Sadie said.

"Yeah." They shared a quick smile before splitting ways.

His parents weren't home—he unlocked the front door to a dark and empty house, found a note in the kitchen explaining that they'd gone out for the evening, and went to his room and rolled onto his bed, barely bothering to cover himself partway with the blankets.

The thing about trying to exercise his self-worth by imagining he had no friends was that once he started imagining that, it became incredibly easy to see it as reality. Despite having lived in Beach City all his life, barely anyone knew him. A few adults did, he had a few casual acquaintances his own age. He supposed more people knew of him as a concept, if not by name, like regulars at the Big Donut, but that hardly counted. The thing was that he had to pretend in order to be liked. He had to maintain an act on some level. He liked to hang out with Buck and Jenny and Sour Cream, and they didn't seem to mind him hanging out with them. But more often than not, he was insanely nervous around them. Even when he was enjoying himself, he was monitoring every element of his behavior—where he put his hands, what he said, when and how he laughed—everything he did was the most anxiously controlled presentation of casualness. He was infinitely more at home around Sadie, but even then, when his mood worsened, it strained their relationship until he happened to feel better or decided to act like he was doing okay.

He couldn't stop his moods from going south. It just happened, sometimes like a switch being flipped in the middle of the day, even in the middle of a conversation. And he got angry, and sad, and both at the same time, and this didn't make him much fun to be around, especially since he wasn't that much fun to be around even when he was having a good day. It was all very much a part of who he was—a really important part, even. And nobody liked that part. If they ever saw any sign of it, their kindest reaction was to wish it would go away. So did he, but he couldn't make it go away. Other people could and did make it go away simply by leaving him behind and moving on with their lives.

Even now, when he wasn't feeling incredibly horrible, just vaguely annoyed with everything and mostly empty—lying alone in his room in the dark, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars he'd put on his ceiling a decade ago, with no desire to do anything or speak to anyone for the rest of his life—he had major doubts that Sadie would like to be around him right now. And if he really wanted to be close to her, wouldn't he have to let her see him like this at some point? He was much less afraid of her being angry at him for things than he was afraid of her just not being there anymore. He was scared of her seeing how bitter and miserable he was so much of the time, and feeling her have to fake enjoyment of his company, and seeing her less often, until realizing one day that they weren't friends anymore.

It was a shitty deal that whenever he needed help more than usual, he avoided people and they avoided him. He had such a tendency to want to hide it and to get angry and defensive and do anything to be left alone. And he could only successfully be around people again when he'd suffered through the worst of it by himself and could start to act better because of it. It had worked out that way on the island—by their first night there he was badly frightened and unhappy, but he determinedly kept Steven and Sadie at arm's length and could only express that he was pissed the fuck off. The only reason he was eventually able to relax a little was that the passing time forced him to become used to their situation, and he just got too tired to be as upset as he initially was. And that's when everything started to improve, until everything was so great that he woke up and realized how bad it really was all over again.

Sadie just didn't like the part of him that was sharp and angry and ugly and poisonous. No one did.

Lars felt as exhausted as he had back at work and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When he woke up he wandered around the kitchen, looking for something to eat. He'd been undereating for almost a week—he just hadn't felt like having more than a single small meal a day—and it had accumulated so that he actually felt hungry for once. He was willing to cook something, but ended up just making a frozen pizza. It took a while to bake in the oven and he found himself just sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window, trying to make himself want to do anything and coming up empty. Any normal person would at least want to do something simple—watch TV, read the paper, make a collage, _something. _He even had a house to himself, for god's sake. But there was only a handful of people who he could invite to do anything. And he was a thousand miles from actually feeling like it. There was nothing more boring than sitting alone staring at the wall and yet he couldn't think of one thing he wanted to do instead. He couldn't even feel bored. He didn't even feel generally irritated anymore. It was like he was a computer that had gone idle. He wished he could be turned off for a while. Then he could be reactivated only when he was recharged, or maybe when his life was actually interesting or meaningful in any way and there was actually something for him to do with himself.

He could barely wait for the pizza to cool before eating it and almost burned his mouth. Then he was still hungry enough to heat up and eat a bowl of leftover rice. Afterwards he just went straight back into his bed, wanting to pass out again for the night even though it was barely nine. There wasn't anything for him to do until getting up to open the Big Donut again. He never even heard his parents arrive back home and slept soundly until his alarm went off in the morning.

His mood for that day could pretty much be summarized in wanting to be left alone. He was disinterested in everything and even moreso, totally disengaged. He actually got along more easily with Sadie than he had in a long time. He didn't really feel any pressure to talk with her more than the occasional exchanges they had. All the stress and concern he'd had over their relationship just wasn't there. He didn't even want attention from anybody. He wasn't interested in any of it.

There was kind of a nice moment in the afternoon when they were both sitting quietly behind the counter, having finished all the work from the lunchtime rush, and something made Lars remember a terrible book he'd read once years ago, and he mentioned it to Sadie and ended up summarizing it for her, making her laugh the way he sometimes could. Afterwards she seemed more relaxed to him, though he hadn't noticed her being particularly tense before. He stayed quiet for basically the rest of the day. He didn't even bother with the occasional sarcastic response to customers, he didn't launch into a stream of complaints when they left. He didn't feel like speaking, thinking, feeling—nothing.

At one point, when he was by himself, leaning against the countertop and staring at a stain in the ceiling tiles, Sadie came and asked him to scrub the floor under the shelves, since they hadn't done that in about a month. He stared at the ceiling for a moment longer, pushed himself upright with a long sigh, and trudged into the back room. He didn't even have the capacity to resent his job.

"God, this is gross," he muttered under his breath, on his knees in front of one of the sets of shelves, trying to twist his upper body underneath them to sweep some of the unidentifiable junk on the floor there into a dustbin.

Sadie walked over to stand beside him, moving her hands over the faces of cardboard boxes.

"Are you, um—" She gave a nervous laugh. Lars paused.

"Are you mad at me?" she finished. Her voice was casual, but Lars was experienced enough in pretending to be calm to recognize the slightly forced, unnatural element of her tone. He extracted himself from beneath the shelf and looked over at her. She was pretending to be looking for something on the shelf, fingers traveling lightly across stickers and labels. She kept glancing off to the side, though, away from him, and her blush was visible even as she tried to shield her face from view with some hair tossed in front of her shoulder.

Lars looked at the wall. He didn't know what he wanted right now. He didn't know how he was feeling. His emotions had all but checked out for the day.

He took a deep breath, intending to speak, and let it out slowly when he failed to come up with any words. He tended to struggle with thinking of what to say on the spot. He'd take a moment to figure out what he wanted to say, but all he would think was _I don't know what to say, I don't know what to say, I'm supposed to be thinking of something, I'm taking so long, I'm not thinking of anything, I'm making this weird__—_until he realized how long he'd extended his silence, how little he'd made up his mind what to say, and panic further, making it even more impossible to speak.

He wasn't panicking now, but his head was filled with a repeated "I don't know" anyways. _Am I mad at her? I know I was—I really was, just a while ago, but now—I don't know._

He put his hands on his knees, he stared at the wall for answers, he glanced over at Sadie waiting silently for his reply, shifting her weight slowly from one leg to the other.

"I—I don't—" he mumbled. He wondered if this was the opportunity he had wanted, where they could really and actually talk about what they expected from each other - he wondered if they could change everything with just one conversation in the back of the Big Donut—and he really hoped that this would happen at a different time. Because he was really, really trying, but he just could barely feel anything. He could remember how he felt in the past, how he felt just yesterday, and he could guess that by tomorrow he'd be closer to normal, but right now—it was like his ability to feel things was just turned way, way down.

"I don't know," he said, in a voice clearer than he expected.

He saw her look at him. He didn't avoid it and just met her eyes, both of them still and quiet.

"...What do you want me to do?" she said. "Am I doing something wrong, or..."

Lars looked away at that.

"I really—I really don't know," he said. "I'm still trying to figure it out, y'know? I'm just...feeling weird lately. And I'm feeling weird on my own, it's not cuz you're—it isn't—" He stumbled over his words and stopped short. He always embarrassed himself, getting nervous and talking quickly and clumsily as if he was lying, when really he was doing his best to tell the truth. He just didn't know what to say.

"I don't know how to explain it," he continued. "I don't, I really don't—it's weird, and I'm trying to figure it out but I have no clue, and I—I just don't know what to say. I don't know what's going on."

"I mean—am I supposed to leave you alone?"

"You're...I don't need you to, like, stop talking to me or anything, I just...I'm in a weird mood today and I don't really. I mean I don't want to talk to anybody. You know? Like I know that—I know that sounds mean but I'm not trying to say I don't like you, I'm not saying that it's bad when you talk to me, I just..." He sighed. "It's just kind of a waste of time today. I—"

He stopped, struggling with his thoughts some more. He didn't know what he meant. Should he be apologizing? Was he lying, should he have said that yeah, he was still mad at her, weeks later? Sadie's expression wasn't hard to read—she was confused and upset but she was trying to hide it. Lars was actually really good at accurately reading the emotions conveyed in people's faces and voices, but from there, his own awful social skills and awkward handling of his own emotions meant he could never really take advantage of that. He was making Sadie feel bad, he was somehow fucking this up, but he didn't know how to do better.

"Okay," Sadie finally said when Lars failed to speak. "Sorry. I'll just—"

A customer came in and Sadie practically fled to the front of the store. Lars didn't move, trying to figure out what had happened. He could feel a subdued glow of emotion which he recognized as shame. He had to give Sadie space and avoid any more encounters like this today. He just couldn't function properly, his brain was acting slow and half-awake. But he didn't know how to explain any of it to Sadie. He was embarrassed to, anyways. Sadie didn't need a ten-hour monologue about the ways his head worked and he didn't want to try giving one.

And he realized—days like this were part of who he was. It was just a fact that sometimes he got like this. And here he was, thinking that the best way for Sadie to deal with him like this was to stay away from him and ignore him as much as possible. He couldn't have any illusions about it—he really had no belief that Sadie would like him if she kept being exposed to his, say, less-than-ideal days. It was one thing to see him irritable and standoffish at work. It was another thing to see him in his room in the dead of night, panicking, pacing rapidly, hand-wringing, bursting into tears and fighting to keep silent from the rest of the house. Or ignoring anything and anyone he liked, exhausted and stuck in his own head, just because he'd woken up feeling that way and couldn't change it. Or getting so sad that he suddenly became furious, going from stifling misery to an explosion of anger in a matter of seconds, pulling at his hair and kicking at the floor and cursing himself and everyone and everything.

He considered himself right now, kneeling in the empty back room of his terrible place of work, knowing he was upsetting his best friend, he'd already upset her, but not knowing how he could've avoided it or what he'd done wrong, and not knowing if there was anything he could or should do about it—he couldn't even focus on thinking through the situation. He was just too damn tired.

Exactly what he'd suspected would happen was now unfolding right in front of him. He was having a bad day—bad days—weeks—months. It was definitely a day that he was unpleasant to be around. He couldn't be nice, or upbeat, or funny, or even interesting. And Sadie didn't like it, she was uncomfortable. And it was probably the best case scenario that she'd tried directly talking to him about it, and it fell flat because he couldn't even be honest about himself when he was actually trying to be. Nobody could like him—nobody could ever actually like him—because he was never ever going to be able to actually be himself all of the time. There was always some version of himself that didn't want to be known or seen or loved, there were always times he was ashamed of himself and how he was, there were always parts of him that made it hard just to communicate with others, that kept his thoughts locked away from anyone else.

Sadie returned to the room and startled him so much he dropped the brush and dustpan he'd still been holding. He didn't look at her. It had only been an inability to talk, to voice his thoughts, but it felt as if he'd done something rude. He couldn't explain this mood he was in, where he still liked everyone that he liked, but he didn't want to speak with anybody.

"Sorry," he said quietly as Sadie moved near him.

"What? No, I—" He could hear her pulling garbage bags from the roll in the corner of the room. "No, it's fine, don't worry." She gave a light laugh and swept from the room.

Lars scrubbed the floor under all the shelves, probably twice as thoroughly as he needed to. It took him a long time, and he grew sore after a while, and the smell of the cleaner made him feel sick. He kept himself occupied with any job he could find as the day went on, even starting up on closing duties before Sadie did. He wanted this day to be over as quickly as it could.

Today was just proof that he already knew the answers to all the "what if" questions he had about himself and Sadie. There would be a limit to how much she liked him, maybe even to her liking him at all. It wasn't her fault. The same would be true for anyone. On a fundamental level, he lacked the traits and abilities that could give him intimacy and connection in relationships. He certainly wasn't going to get those things just because he wanted them. His occasional bouts of hoping that someday someone would really, genuinely know him, and they would love him—it was fantasizing, and nothing more.

By closing time, he was starting to feel less numb, and quietly felt sad and scared towards everything in general.

He waited for Sadie outside the Big Donut. Since their failed conversation, they'd spoken only a few times and only on work-related topics. Sadie kept to herself. He hoped she wasn't feeling bad, though he supposed he'd ruined the workday for her. It was like he was poisonous, or radioactive or something. Maybe a bit of each, and with current running through him that would electrocute anyone who touched him.

He locked the back door behind them and he and Sadie set off for home.

"Sorry for being weird today," he said after a few minutes of walking.

"Huh? Oh, no, _I _was weird," Sadie said. She put her hands in her pockets and looked straight ahead.

For the rest of their walk, they only broke the silence to trade a quiet "bye" as they headed off in different directions.

He arrived to an empty house again. He was starting to expect it—his parents' work schedules were always changing, and were still in flux from his unplanned break from work. It wasn't unusual for all three of them to be home at the same time for maybe two or three hours a day at most. He closed the front door and locked it behind him, left his shoes and work shirt in his room, pulled a blanket from his closet, took it to the couch and wrapped himself in it.

He sighed, clenching the blanket tight in his hands.

For all the thought and effort he'd been putting into it, he still couldn't really say he loved himself. But he was still making some progress—he was tired of hating himself. He didn't really feel the need to think he was great, but he didn't have to, if he didn't have to worry about debilitating self-loathing. And he was pretty sick of it. He was always hating himself for the way other people saw him, for their disappointment and dislike and shattered hopes. He couldn't live up to people's expectations, but he knew he wouldn't. He never thought he would, he was never disappointing himself by his own standards—only other people's. He didn't need to think he was a good person. He didn't need to hate himself because other people did. He knew himself. He couldn't fail to meet his own expectations.

And as for Sadie—he had a pretty good idea of what to do with his crush now. He had to consciously, carefully deconstruct it. He knew it wouldn't work out—he knew it _wasn't_ working out. That closeness that had been growing between them—either he was lying to her and hiding the worst parts of himself, or she was lying to herself and believing he was better than he actually was, and he was just taking advantage of that.

It was okay to be casual friends, who maybe saw each other sometimes after work, who didn't mind hanging out and who had fun together sometimes. He knew they were perfectly comfortable having that role in each other's lives. But as soon as he felt like he was sharing something with Sadie that he hadn't shared before, it was too far. What had happened on the island was too much. It only ended up hurting them both. And it had gone too far even before the island—moments of emotional vulnerability, shared secrets and murmured confessions, the comfort of leaning gently against each other under humming fluorescent lights. He had to get rid of it all.

This was one thing he was going to get right. He was going to take control of his feelings about the island, he was going to get rid of them, he was going to undo everything that had led up to it. He had the capability to do this. He could keep their relationship safe from itself, he could learn from his unbroken history of mistakes, and he could keep a friend for once. He wasn't going to have to lose Sadie, too.

Lars ran a hand over his eyes and got up to bring another blanket off his bed over to the couch. He got an extra pillow to support his back, which was aching from the unnatural positions he'd had to pull when cleaning the floor, and drew his legs up and buried himself with the covers. Their weight was comforting and the dim quiet of the house was relaxing.

Lars slowly turned his thoughts to his crush. It was pretty obvious pretty quickly that he wasn't going to be able to take it apart overnight. There were a lot of feelings there, and they were too interwoven for it to be simple even to identify them individually. And experiencing his crush quietly in a calm, solitary place, with no pressure or anxiety—it was simply and undeniably nice. Just a gentle, safe, warm, nice feeling.

He rolled over and tucked his head into the blankets, giving a long, tired sigh.

He flinched and pushed himself partly upright, propped up on one elbow.

"Oh gosh, Lars, I'm sorry," his mom said, picking a plastic cup up off the kitchen floor. "I was trying not to wake you up. You were sleeping pretty hard," she said with a laugh. "I've been home for a little while and I thought I was being too loud, but you never even moved till just now."

Lars gave a soft groan and brushed his fingers through his hair.

"Jeez, I wasn't even trying to sleep," he mumbled.

"Tired from work?" His mom gave him a smile over her shoulder as she put the cup in a cabinet.

"Ugh..." The blankets fell to his lap as Lars sat all the way upright, tilting his head back and to the side to stretch his neck. "I guess so. I've just been kinda out of it all day." He blinked at the kitchen light and listened to the sound of his mom opening and closing drawers. "I still am."

"Mm. I'm making myself tea, I can make some for you too if you want."

"Sure."

A few minutes later his mom carried over two cups, trailing wisps of steam. Lars cradled the hot ceramic in his hands and, with the heavy blankets still covering his legs, it was reminiscent of winter months when they could only afford to turn on the heating for the whole house for a few hours and would have to spend the coldest days going around in layers of shirts and sweaters, wrapping themselves in blankets wherever they sat down, making warm tea as often as they could to ward off the chill that was always creeping up on them. Lars had an especially difficult time since his habit of undereating made it harder just to generate body heat. He spent almost every day of the winter months being cold at work, colder at home, and freezing his ass off walking from one to the other. And one result of it was that he associated any hot beverage with comfort and relief.

His mom gave a slow exhale as she sat back in the old rocking chair that sat nearby, closing her eyes as she leaned back into the cushion. Lars lifted his tea up to breathe in the steam, examining the tiny gold patterns painted on the cup. They sat and shared the quiet.

"You don't have to work another job tonight, do you?" Lars asked after a while.

"No, I'm actually done until tomorrow afternoon. I get to sleep in, hooray..."

"Nice."

Lars looked at his mom while taking a few cautious sips of tea.

"Can I ask you something?" he said eventually.

"Of course."

"How do you still like me when I—when I'm in a bad mood?"

His mom glanced at him, surprised.

"Wait—okay, you can't say that it's because you're my parents, or because you love me. Those aren't allowed to be answers, okay?" He held the hot cup tighter in his hands and looked down at the tea inside.

"You always have such questions..." his mom said. "Why're you asking this now?"

"I dunno, it's just—" Lars kept staring down his tea. "I mean it's not like I've ever been super popular but I just don't get how I'm ever gonna have friends if I'm like this. And like, I'm probably worse around other people than I ever am around you guys. That sounds impossible, but... I mean, it's kind of like I..._want _people to just go ahead and be disappointed by me, you know? Like sometimes I feel guilty when I'm being shitty to people and they still act like they wanna be around me. And I kind of want them to go ahead and say they don't want to see me anymore cuz that's, like..." He sniffed and scratched the back of his neck, a couple of the little things he did to give himself a few seconds of time. "It's like the only actual response anyone could have to seeing what I'm really like, y'know?" He sighed and took a drink of tea.

"You think too badly of yourself, Lars," she said quietly.

"Well..." Lars felt himself blushing. "You don't see what I'm like sometimes, I'm—I'm usually a little better around here than I am on my own, I get mad a lot and I—I dunno, I've just done stuff that wasn't, uh. Wasn't great—" He gave a short laugh. "And it doesn't look like I'm good for anyone and I can't think of a reason anybody would want to like, be my friend. And like I figured the only people I could ask about what it's like to have to hang around me is you and Dad."

"...We don't love you any less because you're angry or unhappy."

Lars leaned back against the armrest of the couch and drew his knees up.

"I mean...why not?"

"We've never just loved you when you're in a good mood, that's not what it's about—"

"But that's cuz you're my parents," Lars protested. "Like, you _gotta _take care of me no matter what I'm like. Nobody else, like..._has _to be around me all the time."

"But people don't—not everyone expects the same thing out of their friendships. Some people—most people you'll meet, probably, will just be looking for the kind of friendship where you don't ever even have to see each other in a bad mood," she said. "The kind that's more for fun than for being together when you're having a hard time. But sometimes you'll end up with a friend who just wants to be in your life, for all the parts of your life, the good and bad times. It's just...rarer, than the more casual friendships."

"But I barely have any of those friendships either," Lars said. "I'm not—I mean, most people, if their life sucks they're sad, but they don't—they don't hurt people, but I do, and it's easier for—I guess I feel hurt a lot too, like stuff bothers me that normal people wouldn't even be upset about, and I just..." He looked at his mom and saw the worry in her expression. "I dunno. It's dumb."

"I know it's harder for you," she said softly. "It's okay that it's harder—I mean, it isn't wrong. It's just...I wish I had better answers for you, but...just don't give up, okay?"

Lars looked away and gave a shrug, not intending to admit that he kind of already had.

He kept quiet about his concerns after that and tried to act more engaged and happy than he felt. It was a relief to be able to talk about his thoughts sometimes, but he was worried he'd pushed it too far. He was afraid of his parents thinking that he needed extra help. If they sent him to a doctor, if he was prescribed medicine or therapy, it would be a huge expense for them. Although they had a little bit of money left over after paying the monthly bills, they still lived a bit paycheck to paycheck and didn't have any extra spending to cut down on. If they had to spend a lot of money on anything more than they already were, they'd just have to work even more than they already did if they wanted even the most fragile sense of financial security. He couldn't stand the thought of increasing his health and happiness by taking those things away from his parents. He felt guilty enough already knowing that his parents had pretty much dedicated their lives to raising him, so much of their time and money and energy was spent for him. He was already doing enough harm by making it seem like all their years of dedication and sacrifice had been a waste. He was their only kid, and he was supposed to be rewarding all their efforts by just living life well, and instead he was this tired, talentless, unambitious, directionless, unpleasant mess of a person who wasn't even sure he liked living at all.

He made dinner himself again - his dad was still out working, so he just cooked for him and his mom. It wasn't anything fancy and he didn't particularly enjoy it, but he wanted it to be clear to his mom that he wasn't crushingly depressed, and it gave him something to do. His mom talked to him a bit, curious about what it was like to have a kind of instinctive sense for cooking, when she could follow a recipe perfectly well but wouldn't know how to deviate from it. Lars explained it as best he could as he went along but told her he had no clue why he could guess what would work well and what wouldn't. She left to lie down as he took a while to finish everything. When he woke her up to tell her that it was ready, she smiled at him and gently brushed her fingers along the side of his face.

Afterwards, he took a hot bath for a long time, lying back and letting the water's warmth permeate his body. He practically fell asleep again and after washing and drying himself, he went to his room, turned off the light, and curled up in his bed to let himself pass out if he needed to. He knew he actually had the next day off from work and he would usually stay up late and sleep in, but he had been thoroughly tired for ages and wanted to give himself a reset after feeling strange and uncomfortable all day.

He woke up almost twelve hours later. The static that had seemed to interfere with his head throughout the previous day had faded away, as he hoped, and he felt a lot more normal. He'd gone to bed so early that he'd woken up before his mom, who was also taking advantage of a rare opportunity to sleep in. He saw some of his dad's things scattered around the kitchen and figured that he'd gotten home at some point during the night and went to bed as well.

Lars considered what he wanted to do with his day off while he made himself a bowl of cereal. Being in a boring town without a lot of friends, money, time, or energy didn't give him many options. He kind of wished he could hang out with Sadie, especially since he was pretty sure she thought he was giving her the cold shoulder yesterday. But as he thought about it, it became obvious that he was lying to himself if he thought he would be able to just be at total ease around her and not cause any more problems for them. Because for one thing, he was feeling this intense desire to kiss her again. Just to sit beside her with their hands resting on each other and kiss for as long as they wanted—a whole hour even, just kissing, soft and slow. The idea of it was so nice—it seemed cruel that he couldn't just trust this feeling, this hope that was good and gentle and terribly within reach. He had to remind himself sharply that his crush was the same as every other illusion about relationships he'd had in the past—it was either one-sided, or the affection someone was feeling for him only existed because they didn't know the reality of who he was. The longer it took for him to get his emotions under control, the more he risked damaging his relationship with Sadie in the process of trying to keep it.

He decided to go for a walk along the beach again. It was nearby and it was free and it gave him an excuse to leave the house at least once that day. He even put on clothes that were more practical for the beach—he wore a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals. It was a refreshing change to be leaving the house for a reason other than heading to work.

He'd been walking for a little while, focused on the clouds in the sky, when he was startled to hear his name being called. He swung around to face that direction and, after a few bewildering seconds, saw Jenny and Sour Cream sitting at a table on the sidewalk about a block and a half away, waving at him. He lifted a hand in return with a smile, slightly embarrassed, and started walking over towards them, hands in his pockets. He hoped his outfit didn't look as terrible as he thought it might.

"What up, Lars," Sour Cream greeted casually as he approached their table.

"Hey," Lars said with a laugh that always sounded too nervous no matter how much he controlled it. "Not much, what're you guys doing?"

"We're bout to go see that one movie, I forget what it's called, something something Revenge?" Jenny looked over at Sour Cream for confirmation. He shrugged with one shoulder. She turned back to Lars and sipped on a milkshake. "Wanna come?"

"Oh, um, I—I think I, uh—" Lars flushed and stumbled over his words, digging his fingers into his legs through his pockets. He couldn't think on the spot how to turn down the invitation without making it seem like he didn't want to go or didn't like them or anything. He couldn't explain that he didn't even have enough money to go to the tiny local movie theater, because he didn't have any spending money, because a lot of his paychecks went right towards the bills and he had to hold on to every extra dollar because he was still saving up for a new phone, and it would take another month before he had enough and could start spending his leftover money on himself again.

He found it harder to speak with every passing moment, wilting under their expectant gazes.

"Oh, hey, Lars." A low, even voice came from just over his shoulder and Lars outright flinched in surprise as Buck walked past him to rejoin the others. Lars could feel the heat of his blush grow even worse. He rocked back on his heels and managed to laugh at his own awkwardness.

"I was, um, actually..." He glanced away from them. "I like, gotta be home in a bit, cuz my parents, uh—they need me back soon," he lied, "and I was like, I'm just out for a walk for a minute but I don't have enough time to hang out... Sorry."

Buck was facing his direction, arms folded, impassive, leaning back in his chair, and Lars couldn't tell if Buck was looking at him from behind his sunglasses. He blushed and blushed, avoiding glancing over at Buck to check in case that meant he'd inadvertently make eye contact.

After only a moment's pause, Sour Cream lowered his phone and said, "That's cool, man. Gotta help out the 'rents." Buck and Jenny nodded coolly.

"Yeah," Lars breathed. He wished he had the courage to admit that, even though he had a job, he didn't have much money, that his family just barely had enough money and couldn't afford some of the things that everyone else seemed to be able to.

"We should get going," Buck informed his friends. Jenny rose to her feet and pulled her jacket on.

"Want us to text you next time we do something?" she asked. "We haven't seen you around in like, forever."

"I, uh, actually...broke my phone," he said with a shrug and half a smile. "I mean, I should be able to get a new one sometime soon, but right now I can't, like—I don't have a phone."

"Aw, that sucks," Jenny said, pulling a face. "Well, let us know when you get back on the grid, kay?" She walked around the table to tug on Sour Cream's shoulder. "C'mon."

"Alright, I'll, uh, see you guys later," Lars said, and started off towards the beach again, glancing back over his shoulder at the group as they walked away, talking and laughing to each other. He relaxed when he went around a corner and was out of their sight—even with as many times as he'd gotten to hang out with them, he could still find himself outright afraid of what they thought of him.

The beach wasn't too crowded, but he stayed about a dozen feet from the water's edge to avoid everyone who was playing in the surf. He took off his shoes and carried them in his hand so he could feel the sand against his feet. He felt good, with the sunlight warming his skin and the ocean air in the breeze sweeping around them all.

He was caught entirely off guard about a half an hour later when his name was called out again, this time from Sadie, who was on the boardwalk with her mom. He went over to them, rubbing the sand off his feet on the wood and sliding his shoes back on.

"Hey," he said to them, shifting his weight from one foot to the other a few times and rubbing a hand along his arm.

"Hi, Lars," Barb said, looking somewhere down the street. "I'm gonna go ahead to the store. Meet you there later, okay?" she said to Sadie, who smiled and nodded.

"Hey, uh, it's lucky I ran into you," Sadie said to Lars as her mom headed off.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I...I had something I wanted to tell you, and I kinda forgot we had the day off until my mom reminded me as I was just about to leave for work," she laughed. Lars smiled and felt his heart start beating hard as he grew nervous about what Sadie could have to say to him. Whatever it was, he knew he'd have no chance to think over his response, and that scared him.

"Um, I was thinking about...what you were talking about before, when you came over? And I said...I said I didn't want to talk then, and for a while I was kind of avoiding it, and then for a while I wasn't really sure if I was ready to talk, but you never brought it up again, though I guess—" She gave a nervous laugh. "I guess that wasn't really fair, was it. But, um, I've been thinking..." She rubbed a hand through her hair. "I think I know what you meant, when you said we have to talk about it to make stuff better? I think you're right, and...I'm probably as ready as I'll ever be, so...do you wanna talk about it?"

Lars was already starting to shake at the hands.

"I—I—god, Sadie, it's—I mean, it's been—almost a month—"

"I know," she said, blushing. "I'm sorry, I just...it took me a while to figure stuff out..."

"No, I mean—I don't—uh—" The stress he was under was so bad it was tantamount to panic. He started breathing hard as he rushed to come up with what he should say.

_You've got to leave everything from the island behind._

_Don't lead her on, don't let her think you're any good, she doesn't know you'll keep disappointing her__—_

"Lars, hey, are you..." Sadie looked at him with concern, tentatively reaching a hand out towards him. He supposed he was kind of panting now and his legs were trembling beneath him.

"I mean I've been thinking since then too," he rushed, "And I—I think I changed my mind, I don't—I don't—" He shook his head. "I can't talk about it now," he said. "Maybe...I just—no. I can't—no."

Sadie hugged her arms around herself and looked at her feet, then back at him.

"But, I mean, you said you...I mean, I remember, you really wanted to talk about it..." she trailed off weakly.

"I know, I know—I changed my mind since then, we don't have to talk about it, okay? I gotta, I—" He took a step or two back and glanced away a few times. "I gotta go, okay? I have to get back home, I—my parents—"

"O-okay." Sadie gave a strained smile.

"I'll, um, I'll see you later though, Sadie, I'm..." He started moving away, clenching one hand into a fist, trying to feel more in control.

"Right, okay, see you later," she said, already managing to sound more upbeat. "I should, um...yeah."

"I'm sorry," Lars said in a voice that seemed too loud, and he turned and strode towards home, keeping his head down and fighting to catch his breath.

After everything, now he was the one who didn't want to talk about the island.

* * *

**((Somebody left a comment as a guest that I really wanted to respond to and I might as well mention it in general. They were saying that they related to this as someone with BPD, and that's honestly a good sign because I'm writing all this with Lars having BPD in mind, it's very much supposed to be about that particular experience! Just in case anyone isn't familiar with BPD and is curious, a vague sort of definition is that BPD generally comes with very intense emotions and mood swings that are difficult or impossible to control, and things like insecurity in relationships, self-destructive tendencies, anger issues, and a changing/lack of identity, to name just a few. It's also very common for BPD to be accompanied by other disorders, such as depression and anxiety, and BPD in combination with these can cause particular issues for people; for example, people with depression who also have BPD are much more likely to self-harm and/or be suicidal.))**


	5. Chapter 5

**(PSA: this one gets a lot more upfront about suicidal thoughts, and has a lot more incidents / thoughts of self-harm, though in different manifestations than before; i.e. it doesn't involve cutting)**

* * *

Lars almost felt like he was going to make it home alright and then he walked in front of a restaurant and a group of people sitting around a table outside all looked over at him. He saw them and it was like a grip on his already twisting stomach. A few of their gazes lingered; he jerked his head away and spat out "_stop it_" under his breath.

He tried to steady his shaking hands and found that he'd completely lost that ability. It felt like everyone was staring at him now. He was walking fast but it was getting way too difficult to breathe.

Something huge whistled through the air overhead.

"_Shit!_"

He flung his arms up in front of his face and stumbled back against a wall as he glimpsed something else fly after it. Lars couldn't hear himself cry out in fear over the earsplitting shriek that filled the air. His gut instincts left him unable to run—he turned away and dropped to the ground, huddling his limbs close to himself, gripping the back of his head, eyes squeezed shut. There were a few booming crashes; he could feel them in his bones. He was absolutely petrified and barely even noticed when something hit him across the arm. He heard an explosion and felt its pressure and was bombarded with smaller hits all over his body and then—

Then—

He slowly lifted his head, and, hearing no further sounds of destruction, carefully turned to see what had happened.

There was a decent crater on one side of the road, with signs of damage radiating out from it. A car looked to have been totalled, a store's sidewalk display was scattered across the street. Someone was standing in front of a dented metal cart, its contents spilled out across the cement, staring at it with a mix of shock and misery before leaning down and struggling to heave it upright again.

In the middle of the mess was the small purple gem with the long hair, the one who came in for donuts sometimes, whose name Lars never really knew as neither ever introduced themself to the other—she was wielding a long whip which vanished in a glow of purple light as she ran up to the center of the crater, picked something up, and held it in the air, shouting something to the other gems who were just now running up the street as well, with Steven tucked under one of their arms.

With the fog of panic clearing from his head, Lars panted and looked around him to see little pieces of brick and broken planks of wood strewn around him. As he grew aware of himself again he could feel the small stings and aches from where the rubble must have hit him. He stood up, cautiously running his hands along his back, and was slightly relieved that he didn't seem to have any major injuries. Except his right arm was badly sore where it had been struck—he twisted it around and craned his neck and could see an impressive bruise beginning to develop there. He swore under his breath.

A few other people on the street who'd been caught up in it too who were beginning to emerge from behind tables and cars; a few store owners and customers hesitently peered out their doors.

Lars saw the gems walking away, talking amongst themselves—he knew that meant it had to be safe again. He stood up, trembling, trying to wipe the dirt off himself.

"Lars?"

"_God!_" he hissed to himself. He didn't want to hear his name called again today. Especially not by Steven.

"What?" he snapped, whipping around to glare in that direction.

"Haha, it _is _you! What're you doing here?" Steven ran up towards him with a smile.

"...I _live _here," Lars growled. "In Beach City, not the Big Donut. Now since you almost killed me, could you maybe leave me alone?"

Steven laughed as though he'd told a joke. Lars couldn't stand this right now.

"No, no, the gems stopped it before it could hurt anybody! And I helped!" he said proudly.

"Ugh, Steven, just because you guys managed not to get anybody murdered—look at all this, look at the road, the city's gotta pay to fix these kind of messes and it keeps making 'em raise taxes and some people can't afford that again, not without losing their home—or—or losing—"

Lars cut himself off, way too upset. Steven stared up at him blankly.

"Just leave me alone." Lars turned his back on Steven.

"Oh, Lars, your arm—" Steven reached out and touched the bruise, which gave Lars a sharp bite of pain. Lars flinched away and grit his teeth.

"_Don't!_"

"Sorry, sorry! Do you want me to try and fix it? Sometimes I can do this thing where—it doesn't always work, but I can try to—"

As Steven spoke, Lars's breathing difficulty had restarted again.

"_No, _go away," he spat. "Keep your weird magic shit away from me and just _leave _me _alone!_"

Steven shrank back, looking hurt and almost scared, and Lars got to add a nice dose of self-loathing to his raging temper. He hated this place, he hated the bullshit that happened to and around him, he hated how loss of money felt like a matter of life and death and the threat of it haunted him constantly, he hated how Steven kept trying to be his friend when he was so useless and venomous, he hated that his anger rendered him incapable of even going easy on a fucking kid. He hated himself more than anything as he turned away and stalked off, heading towards Sussex Road, refusing to look behind or around him, eyes straight ahead, glaring past anyone who crossed into his field of vision.

He didn't care what anyone in the world thought of him. If they liked him, they'd learn their lesson in their own time. If they hated him, they were already right.

He felt sick, shaken up, furious, he felt completely pointless. He eventually reached the small highway leading out of town and walked along it, keeping as fast a pace as he could on the slight incline, forcing himself to breathe steadier solely through exertion.

It was a solid twenty minutes before his legs began to ache and Beach City was just a smear bordering the ocean on the horizon, a good mile or two away. Lars finally slowed his steps and turned away from the road, stumbling out into the field alongside it, until he reached the border of the small woods that grew there. He collapsed at its edge, gripping moss-covered roots, beginning to cry bitterly.

Small sobs did nothing to help his breathing, working in combination with his breathlessness from the walk and the anxiety that refused to let go of his lungs. He gasped for air with grating, shallow panting.

Occasionally, a car drove past, and he hated the thought of one taking notice of him even though he knew they wouldn't. He was just some stupid, crazy kid doing stupid, crazy things because he couldn't deal with how worthless he was. He was losing his best and only friend, he was letting down his parents, he was wasting his life, he was failing at every tiny thing he tried to do, he had no importance of any kind in a world when he was already pathetic by anyone's standards but there were magical beings with actual power and ability that he could never, ever attain, he had no purpose in a town where he held an easily replaceable job and ruined the day of everyone he encountered, he had no place in a life that he didn't even want, he wanted to die, he wanted so badly to lie down and die in this forest and be softly forgotten by the world, he was worthless, he wasn't worth the air he breathed, he wasn't worth the pain he caused, he wasn't worth the oxygen he was stealing from everyone else with every moment he was alive.

"Please," he sobbed, to no one and for nothing in particular. His hands and shoulders and knees were shaking. He gave a piercing gasp for air, following by rapid wheezing inhales as he clung to the trunk of a tree like a lifesaver. The roughness of the bark hurt his hands, so he squeezed harder, he raked his fingers down the tree to pull himself on his feet.

He stood there for a while, tears falling down his cheeks and dripping from his chin, staring at the scrapes across his palms. It wasn't enough. He wanted to destroy himself and he wanted to be dead. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't calm down, he felt sick, he felt so sick.

In a matter of seconds it became full-blown nausea. He hated that feeling more than almost any physical pain he could inflict upon himself—which, in this case, was exactly what he wanted.

He leaned over, panting, hands on his knees, making no effort to fight off the sensation. He pushed a fist against his stomach, trying to worsen it. A sob turned into a rough gag. He couldn't breathe, it was like he was choking on the small amount of air he managed to suck into his lungs, he felt like he was suffocating.

Lars stumbled, grabbed hold of a tree—his hands smarted badly—he doubled over, dry-heaving, fighting to suck in any air in the miniscule pauses between retching. He brought his thumb along his collarbones to the base of his throat and pushed hard against it, as far in and down as he could manage, choking himself.

After one more false start, he finally managed to vomit a small amount of stomach acid onto the grass. He took a few deep breaths, then coughed up another ounce or two of acid and saliva. He spat as much of it out as he could, and he felt exhausted and weak and horribly dizzy. He clung tighter to the tree. A breeze from the ocean reached him, smelling fresh and familiar, and he tried to take a deep breath—it shuddered and broke, and he sank to his knees, hoarse gasps tearing at his throat.

Lars blacked out.

He found himself leaning against the tree, finally breathing normally, if heavily and roughly—inhaling didn't ache and he didn't feel like he was drowning in air anymore. He was still upright, so he figured he hadn't actually passed out—there was just a noticeable gap in his memory that included when he actually got past his breathlessness.

Lars hugged the trunk. He was crying again, quieter, tears and snot running down his face. He stared out at the distant road, watching the occasional car drive by.

He didn't want to exist anymore. He hated being alive. He hated himself more than he could stand, but he had to stand it because he couldn't stop it, he had no idea how to stop it. There was no protocol for what to do when your self-loathing was a burning weight in your stomach. Nobody told you how to fix it when you no longer had any interest in being alive, when it was breaking your heart that you didn't have a gentle way of killing yourself.

He needed something to happen _now._ The desperation flooded every thought he had, it was a physical ache rising through him. But his surroundings were bleak, empty, and unchanging, as if mocking how intensely he wanted something to come out of the blue and get rid of him. He thought about all the near-death experiences he'd already had, how close and he'd come to being killed and how often, and he cursed the luck that had kept him alive. He wished that someone loved or hated him enough to kill him.

_Fuck you,_ he thought viciously. _You're fucking useless, look at you. You stupid, disgusting, worthless piece of shit—look at yourself. You're horrible, you're a fucking waste._

He forced himself upright, a bit unsteady on his feet. He managed to get his voice out in quavering swears as he looked back towards Beach City.

_What were you even going to do? You can't even do anything out here. You aren't even thinking. You know you can't do anything but go back home. _

He didn't want to, he didn't want to be around anyone ever again. He wanted to be like this forever, alone in the middle of nowhere, where nothing happened, where he didn't have to exist anymore. But he couldn't. There wasn't really any peaceful nothingness to be found anywhere. He'd get thirsty, hungry, cold. With enough time, someone would come looking for him. He had to go home, he had no choice.

His breaths were quiet sobs as he began walking slowly back towards the road. He lifted his shirt to wipe at his face, but a minute later it was a mess again. He watched Beach City through the blur of his tears as he made his way back towards it, just able to make out a few boats coming in to port. He wished he could get a feeling of comfort from looking towards home, towards everyone in the world who knew him or cared about him. He wanted there to be something to give him comfort. He didn't want to dread returning to what was the safest place in the world for him.

He hated how badly he'd fucked himself up, how badly he fucked up his everyday life when it was so empty and insignificant in the first place.

His legs hurt. His anger was more bitter than explosive now and everything was catching up with him—especially when he'd gone as fast and as far as possible on the walk over with the specific intent of draining himself of energy. Trying to keep a decent pace started to hurt too much and he had to slow down. He wiped at his eyes and nose again. Beach City was so far away and he was so exhausted.

Eventually the ache in his legs worsened into a sharp pain. It reached the point where he would have to sit down for a bit, walk a few hundred feet, and sit down again, shivering and panting.

At some point, though he hadn't noticed when, he'd stopped crying. His thoughts were mostly limited to berating and insulting himself. He had to drag his feet to conserve energy and he tripped on rocks sometimes, stumbling to catch himself, making his soreness worse.

He'd been sitting on the side of the road for a minute, breathing, trying to numb himself to the pain throughout his body so he could keep going, when he heard a car that was going by slow down and come to a stop on the gravel along the side of the road.

He looked up to see someone getting out of a slightly beat-up grey car. He pushed himself to his feet again, too tired to feel anxious.

"Are you alright?" the person called.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you lost?"

"No, I'm going home, I just needed a break for a second."

"Do you live in Beach City?"

"...Yeah."

"I'm going there, I can take you the rest of the way."

Lars hugged his arms around himself and walked forward cautiously, analyzing the situation.

"You'll have to sit in the back, sorry—I'm bringing a cat home from the vet and she's not very happy, so I've got her in the front seat with me."

Lars decided it was okay, figuring that this didn't seem very likely to lead to abduction, and even if that was a deliberate deceptive tactic, he didn't have a family with money and he wasn't afraid of dying. And trying to walk all the rest of the way to Beach City was just as likely to kill him, in all honesty.

"Okay," he said, guarded. "Thanks."

"Here, I have to unlock this side for you... Sorry about the mess, I've had the kid with me all day too and I had to stash my mom supplies back there."

She opened the back door of the car and cleared a space for him. Lars gave a quiet "thanks" and fit himself into the backseat. There was a baby in a car seat next to him, sleeping.

"You okay back there?" the driver asked as she got back into the front.

"Uh-huh."

The cat gave a high-pitched meow from the carrier in the chair in front of him. Lars looked out the window, savoring the feeling of resting on a soft surface.

Barely a minute had gone by before they were in Beach City again.

"If you stop at this corner up here I can get out here," Lars mumbled. "I live on this street."

"You sure? I can take you to your house," she said, slowing the car and stopping by the curb.

"No, it's okay. It's close by. Thanks for the ride," he said quietly, unstrapping himself and unlocking the door to climb out of the car.

"Sure, have a good day." She turned to smile at him. He gave one in return and shut the car door behind him, pausing for a moment to watch the car pull away and continue down the road. Then he turned and headed down the sidewalk.

He didn't see anyone before reaching his house, which he was immensely relieved about. He went inside, combing his hair through his fingers to try to look better than he felt. The kitchen light was the only one on and everything was quiet—he knew he was alone in the house.

He worked his shoes off and went straight into the bathroom and forced himself to throw up again into the toilet, though his stomach was even emptier than before. He stayed leaning over the bowl for a minute, coughing hoarsely. What he managed to spit out was more saliva and mucus than anything, tinged with a bitter, acrid taste. He straightened up and wiped away the tears it had wrung from him. He got water from the sink and rinsed his mouth out three times before brushing his teeth, then washing his face. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, glared at it.

He stepped back out of the bathroom and leaned against the door for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to think. He felt like he hadn't done enough.

Lars brought a hand to his hair, threading his fingers through it and clenching it in a fist. He went into his room, shut the door, and looked around.

He knew sometimes people hated him enough to want to make him miserable, and sometimes he hated himself enough to want that too. It was something he'd done ever since he was a kid—when he got upset with himself, he'd try to find something he valued and take it away from himself.

He remembered a time when he was in the third grade, and already mediocre in school, and he'd done really well on a multiplication test—he'd only missed one problem. He brought it home and for once was eager to show his parents a grade he'd gotten, and they were proud of him, and he was proud of himself, and he kept the paper in his room as a reminder that he could actually do things well. He'd look at the 24/25 mark whenever he felt like he was awful at everything and it would make him feel better. And then one day, months and months later, he'd felt terrible, like he was useless and would never do anything right. And he saw the test on top of a stack of books and it suddenly seemed pitiful to cling to this one paper as evidence of his worth, but the thought of throwing it away felt bad—which was exactly why he did it. He tore it into a dozen pieces first, soaked them with water and squeezed them in his fist until they were all one mass, and buried it at the bottom of a trash can. He didn't feel as upset anymore after that, taking a spiteful sort of satisfaction in the pain he caused himself.

It was a process he repeated over the years whenever he got too angry with himself. When he was smaller, the destruction was more tangible. He'd get rid of things he liked, taking his collection of cool rocks and shells off his windowsill and throwing it into the ocean piece by piece, crying as he did it, breaking a toy in half and burying it in the backyard by the fence—the day after he'd stopped being friends with Ronaldo, he purged his room spectacularly. He put everything that could possibly serve as a reminder of his once-friend into a garbage bag until it was almost full, then shoved it into the corner of his closet, later dragging it out to the curb to be taken away with the rest of the garbage. It hurt him badly to part with some of the stuff he'd thrown out, but he had to do it—even things he could remember showing off to Ronaldo, hearing him say it was cool, it had to go.

He got a bit more creative when he got older. He was never popular, he never had many friends, so on rare occasions he'd try to encourage himself to go to a school event, just to hang out with everyone, be like all the cool kids. And then when he was upset with himself, he'd tell himself he obviously wasn't going to actually go, and his already tentative conviction would collapse, and he'd make himself stay home and do nothing and resign himself to being the loser he was. He'd hear about an upcoming concert outside of Beach City that he kind of really wanted to go to, and he'd struggle to build up enough money to get a ticket and pay for the bus ride, and it would take a couple months of holding on to every dollar he could and depriving himself of so many other things he wanted, and then, just when it was started to seem like it might be possible he could actually go, he punished himself by deciding he would miss the show and forced it to become certain by spending the money he'd saved up on something else.

It got a bit easier later on when he could just take his frustration out on himself by denying himself food.

Now, as he searched through his room, it was difficult to find anything good enough to fit his purposes. He didn't have many things that he was very attached to lately.

Eventually, he found a drawing in a desk drawer, one he'd only made for school, just a still life—but he'd surprised himself when it turned out better than he expected. He hardly ever impressed even himself anymore, so he'd made sure to keep it.

Lars pulled the drawing out, carefully taking in the sight of it so that he knew he would be genuinely hurt if it was destroyed, then began tearing off thin pieces of it from the side until it was nothing more than a pile of curled paper strips.

He threw them away, but still felt like he hadn't done enough.

He wanted to stop thinking about Sadie, he wanted to stop wanting her to always like him, he wanted her to really know what a fucking shitty disaster he really was.

He wished he wasn't always so angry, and so short-tempered and mean, and so unpleasant and unlikeable, and so pointless and untalented, and so unimportant and weak, and so unhappy, and such a waste, and such a disappointment, and such a source of pain for everyone around him. But he knew that he was all of those things, and that trying to deny it was just going to make it worse. He told himself he was always going to be as shitty as he was now, and he started crying again, and he mocked himself hatefully for crying all the time, even while convinced he deserved to do so.

He lay himself out on his bed, still feeling a bit sick with stress that clenched at his insides, body aching, head filled with memories of times he'd fucked up and known it, of losing something good, of Sadie's face earlier that day when he'd cut off her effort to reach out to him, of Steven's face when Lars responded to his attention with nothing but viciousness. He kept crying, staring at the wall, lying there until he lost track of time entirely.

He was startled by the sound of someone opening the front door—it was his mom arriving back home, he could tell his parents' footsteps apart. As quickly and quietly as he could, he got under the blankets, putting his head on his pillow and facing away from the bedroom door so it would just seem like he was asleep. He was tense as he heard his mom walking around the house, he didn't want anyone to be around him right now, he didn't want to even know anyone was around. He pushed his face against the pillow and tried to keep his breathing slow and steady instead of hitching with quiet sobs.

"Lars?" his mom said softly from just outside the room. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fist and stopped every movement, barely remembering not to hold his breath. It was quiet for a few moments and then he heard her walking away and knew she thought he was asleep. He relaxed a bit and considered actually trying to take a nap. He sure didn't feel like getting up anyways.

_You're pathetic._

He pulled the covers up over his head and tried to just stop thinking, to stop being aware of his own existence.

_Look at you. You're a fucked up mess._

_Why don't you die? Why can't I die, why can't I just die? I don't want this anymore._

He stayed in bed for what must have been an hour, but he never really fell asleep. Eventually, both his parents were home, he could hear them talking and making food in the kitchen. He kind of wanted to get up just because he didn't want them to think he was asleep the whole time, but he was ashamed of himself, and that kept him in bed longer, which made him more ashamed.

He made himself get up out of bed by pretending he wasn't thinking about it. He traded his shorts for an old pair of sweatpants, checked his reflection to make sure nothing looked too out of the ordinary, took a deep breath, and made himself leave his room.

"Hey," he said quietly as he went into the kitchen.

"Hey there," his dad said, taking a pan off the stove. "I just made some soup for your mom and me, you want me to make you something too?"

"Nah, it's okay, I'm gonna make myself something," he answered. He gave his mom a smile as she greeted him from the chair in the next room over.

After his dad had put the soup in bowls and carried them out of the kitchen, Lars started looking around the shelves and in the fridge, trying to figure out what to eat. It was an understatement to say that he was hungry, but he didn't have the energy to cook anything too complicated, and he didn't want anyone to think that he could. He'd realized he'd started to become a bit proud of himself for being able to cook, because Sadie and Steven had assured him he was great at it and praised every meal he made for them, because now both his parents and Sadie's mom thought he had an actual talent—but he didn't. Even if he _was _talented, he didn't even want to do anything with his cooking besides occasionally make things for people he liked. He didn't want others to start thinking he had any worth because he was sort of okay at making food, he didn't want people assigning him worth only because he could cook.

He decided he was just going to make some pasta. He stood in front of the stove, staring at the pot of water he put there, waiting for it to boil.

His mom came over eventually to put her bowl in the sink.

"You okay?" she asked him.

"Huh?" He looked up. "Oh, yeah. I'm fine."

"How's your day off been?"

Lars's heart dropped; somehow he'd managed to forget that he had to go to work tomorrow.

"It's—uh, it's been okay," he muttered. He turned back to the stove, arms wrapped around himself, breathing in the steam.

"That's good," his mom said quietly, and then she left him alone.

Lars watched tiny bubbles of air begin to collect on the bottom of the pan. He really didn't want to go to work tomorrow. Which was usually true, but he _really, really, really _didn't want to now. It wasn't just about work anymore—he couldn't see Sadie. There was absolutely no way he could see her, there was just no way, not even a chance that he could handle it. Even the thought of it was almost panicking.

The water began to boil violently and he forced himself to focus on making food instead, pouring in pasta and monitoring it carefully as he stirred. He wished he had his phone so he could listen to music to distract himself. It seemed to take ages before he actually had the pasta in a bowl in front of him, ready to eat. He stared at it for a few moments, torn between the echoes of nausea and his biting hunger.

When he finally did take the first bite, it felt incredible to actually be having food for the first time that day, but he immediately hated the thought of letting himself have something that he enjoyed so much. But he went ahead and ate it all anyway.

He still felt sick. He stayed in the chair at the table, staring at the empty bowl in front of him, staring out the window.

He couldn't believe that he was feeling this bad, and yet the only thing he could do was return directly to his everyday life, the one that had brought him to this point in the first place. It felt insulting that everything else in the world was behaving as if things were completely normal, as though the way he was feeling didn't matter at all—but that was because it really _didn't_ matter at all. His thoughts and emotions were so strong that it seemed he should be able to split a canyon in the ground, to make the night sky glow as bright as sunrise, to shift the entire ocean like the tide. But the only thing his feelings could do was make him shake and cry and try to hurt himself. He had no actual strength and he never would. He was a weak, small, repulsive thing, and the most extreme result of his emotion's power would be if he killed himself. And even that wouldn't matter, since his entire life would be of no importance whether it lasted under two decades or over a thousand years.

He knew he wasn't going to do it, but he really did want to die. He didn't even want to kill himself—he just wanted to be dead. Barely a month ago, he'd had a night where he felt completely detached from living, and he'd wandered around the house, going through drawers and closets to take note of what medications they had in the house. He just wanted the knowledge, in case any of them would be any help, in case he ever wanted to use them. He hadn't found anything good—almost all the medicine they had was generic and non-prescription, and he could fuck himself up but he wouldn't have the best chance of dying, and he wasn't looking to suffer or to have a failed suicide attempt and have to know that everyone _knew._ He'd actually been really disappointed that he didn't seem to have any simple options for suicide, and he'd actually cried about it a bit before going to bed, and as miserable a time as that had been, the way he felt today was so much worse. He wished, he wished so much, that he had the means to just go to sleep and not wake up again. It didn't matter that he knew he'd be missing out on potential great things in his future—that wasn't the point, it didn't matter. He didn't matter. He wanted this to stop.

"You done?"

Lars jolted and knocked his arm against the table, coming out of his thoughts to see his dad reaching out for the empty bowl in front of him.

"Yeah, sorry."

His dad lifted the bowl away and took it over to the sink; Lars heard him running water to wash the dishes. He looked around, he didn't see his mom anywhere, he figured she must be in her room.

He glanced at the clock.

"Shit," he whispered. It was almost four—if he was going to call out of work sick, he needed to do it now or the manager would give him shit for making them scramble to find a last-minute replacement.

Anxiety was already gripping him unpleasantly as he stood up from the chair and went over to the landline on the counter, staring it down as if he could pretend he wasn't afraid of it.

It wasn't as bad as it might've been. He'd called out of work enough times to know exactly how the conversation always went, and the relief of knowing he could stay home again tomorrow was so great that it made the stress worth it. He didn't know what he was going to do when it was tomorrow evening and he was facing work again, but he couldn't make himself care. Maybe he'd have to quit. He couldn't even care about that. Anything was better than going in to work, than having to see Sadie after he knew he'd done what he always did and completely ruined an important friendship.

He sighed as he put the phone back on the dock.

"You're sick?" his dad asked. Lars glanced over—his dad wasn't looking at him—Lars tried to analyze his tone for an accusation but couldn't be sure one way or the other.

"No," he muttered, turning away.

"Why can't you go to work tomorrow?"

"I just can't."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said defensively. His dad looked at him then, and Lars could tell this time, he could see the weariness in that look, he could see his own dad being tired of him.

He hated that so much. It must've shown in his expression because his dad put down the saucer he'd been wiping and tried to turn towards Lars, but Lars started walking away before he could.

"Lars—"

Lars was way too spent to quell his temper.

"Ugh, I know. I'm a fucking disappointment," he said harshly as he left the room and went down the hall. He already felt guilty, and angry, and scared, and miserable, and somehow on top of all that, he felt empty too. He went back into his bedroom before anything else could happen and closed the door and climbed onto the mattress, dragging all the blankets up around him like a cocoon.

He wasn't entirely sure if he slept. His head was staticky anyways.

It took him over an hour to get up again. It wasn't so much due to his physical exhaustion as it was to having no motivation at all to engage with the world again. But eventually he knew he had a reason to do at least one more thing, one thing he knew he had to do with himself before he could do anything like sleep until he died.

He sat at his desk, tore a page out of his notebook, and looked at it for a while, considering what to write. He couldn't think of anything very good so he just put down what came to mind first.

_Hey Steven_

_Sorry about earlier. Thanks for helping nobody die, that was cool of you_

_Ive been in a bad mood a lot but Im sorry I yelled at you_

_Kinda miss hanging out like we did_

_Your next donut can be on me, even if its one with 3 toppings_

_Sorry_

_Lars_

He folded the paper in thirds and took an old envelope from a pile of papers, crossing out the addresses that were already on it and writing down Steven's instead. He put the letter inside and carefully taped the envelope closed. Looking over it again, he put "Lars" as the return address.

He remembered Steven smiling up at him, reaching out to put a hand against his chest, and for a moment or two making Lars feel like something of a real person after all.

Steven was wrong about him, but Steven was also just a kid. Lars didn't really care if Steven thought well or badly of him, but he cared about making sure Steven wasn't moping around, thinking he'd done something wrong when really he'd just encountered Lars at an unfortunate place and time. He didn't want to have that as a regret.

Lars stood up, clutching the letter to his chest, and tentatively went out of his room again. It was quiet, and he didn't try to figure out where his parents were—he put a stamp on the envelope, went straight out the front door, put the letter in their mailbox, and raised the flag. He retreated back onto the porch, but didn't go inside right away, just leaned against the railing, largely blocked from view of the sidewalk. He rested there for a minute, sheltered from everyone who might try to interact with him.

He couldn't sit out there forever, and he knew it, so after a little while he just went back inside.

_At least you don't have work tomorrow._

_I don't know what to do._

He curled up on the end of the couch, leaning into the corner of it, trying to take up as little space as possible. He picked up a book sitting on the table beside him and leafed through it, reading various sentences without really processing any of it.

He heard his parents coming down the hall and tensed, staring hard at the page in front of him.

"We're gonna go out to get dinner, Lars, is that okay?" his mom asked, putting her phone and wallet in her pockets.

"Um..." Lars looked at the floor. "I'll just stay here," he said. He looked up in time to see his parents glance at each other.

"It might be better for you if you went out somewhere," his dad said.

"Well, I don't want to, okay?" Lars's face burned, embarrassed by how childish he sounded, but angry that he was always being judged for being upset, that even though he had to go through everything on his own, everyone else would always notice his bad moods and be let down by them, which just made his bad mood even worse.

"Are you sure?" his mom said after a pause.

Lars sighed, looking at the book again.

"Yeah, I just wanna stay here for a while."

"Okay," his dad said quietly. "We'll be back in a little while, then, okay? You can call our phones if you need anything, or...if you change your mind."

"Okay," Lars mumbled.

No one said anything else as his parents went out the front door. Lars put the book back on the table, hugged a pillow against his stomach, and felt himself on the verge of tears.

_Of course you'd say you want to stay home and then cry about it when you do,_ he thought to himself. _This is why you're as shitty as you are, you do all this shit to yourself, it's your own stupid fault. _

He wiped his eyes, refusing to let himself break down. He didn't know if he refused to leave the house because he really didn't want to go out, or if it was because he did want to leave and so he forced himself to stay to spite himself, or if he was just going to be upset no matter what he did.

He wanted to be able to think about something besides dying, he wanted to be someone with a life that he wanted to live, he wanted to have something to look forward to, he wanted something to give him hope or comfort or anything, he wanted to feel like he was a good enough person to deserve to be happy, he wanted to feel like he deserved to be alive, he wanted to believe he wouldn't hate himself for the rest of his life, that he wouldn't feel disgusting and bad and inferior to everyone and everything in existence until he finally died.

He wanted to be a real person. He wanted to have an identity, to be someone outside of anger and sadness and loneliness. He wanted to feel like someone, to really feel like a person, to know himself, to be himself all the time, to be able to stop reflecting everyone's personalities back at them as his only way of being around people, to trust that he could be the way that he was and that people might like him for it. He wanted to love and he wanted to be loved and to feel like it was all real. He wanted to be real.

Everyone else was so amazing compared to him, could do so much, could be so much—

He ran his hand up along his arm, and traced his thumb over the texture of his scars.

He didn't know what to do with himself, or what he was going to do, and he was scared, and angry, and bitterly alone. He couldn't bear to tell anyone what was going on. They'd be repulsed by him, or just pity him and consider him beyond help, because he didn't know how to explain everything without having people call him crazy. More than anything, he didn't want that, he was terrified at the idea of being hospitalized, of having everyone looking at him and talking about him and have no one think of him as a person anymore, to not let him control anything about himself anymore.

He wasn't going to kill himself, he knew he wasn't, he couldn't anyway—so he didn't have to be so afraid. Crying and hurting and feeling horrible were things he could keep to himself. It didn't matter how fucked up he got, as long as he could keep it out of sight, it was fine.

He put the weather on the TV for background noise, and started heating up leftovers for himself. He brought the plate he made back to the couch, and spent a good half hour eating slowly and listening to forecasts and commercials. Afterwards, he managed to summon the energy to wash the plate before lying down on the couch and making a real effort to sleep. He focused on nothing else but counting the seconds of his inhales and exhales, making them long and easy and even, making his body relax a bit more with every breath.

The noise of his parents arriving home again woke him in the middle of a dream.

"Lars, uh, Sadie's here," his mom said as she went into the kitchen.

His thoughts lagged behind his hearing as he lifted his head.

"_What?_" He pulled himself upright and his heart was beating hard within a second.

"She was coming down the street right as we got home and says she wants to see you? She's outside right now."

"Huh? What—I—_why?_"

"Didn't say. I guess you have to ask," his dad said.

Lars stood, trembling at the hands already, dazed and shaken up. His parents were chatting quietly, words he couldn't make out, and he looked at the front door and he started breathing harder.

_Just go out there. Just walk forward and open the door._

He straightened the elastic waist of his sweatpants and tried to take a few deep breaths and he opened the front door, looked at the ground as he stepped through and closed it behind him, then looked back up to see Sadie standing at the bottom of the steps. She was gazing off into the sky at the first hints of an upcoming sunset, blonde hair moving with the breeze, fingers playing with the hem of her ocean-blue dress.

Seeing her made it harder to breathe again. He put one hand behind his back to squeeze a fist as tightly as he could, digging his nails into his palm.

"What's up," he managed, voice slightly rough.

She looked over at him, and actually blushed, as if she wasn't the one who looked cute, as if he wasn't standing outside in pajamas, looking exactly the way he should—like someone who was already ugly to begin with but who'd also spent the day breaking down and then burying himself in his bed.

"Hey," she said, smiling at him. "I just came over to, uh..." She trailed off, watching him. He put a hand against the wall and was leaning against it, heart pounding.

"Are you okay?" she asked, the way she always asked whenever he was feeling awful and she always managed to notice and to care.

Lars exhaled hard, and shook his head.

"I can't—I can't do anything, Sadie, okay? I really, really can't, okay, I _can't_."

"I was just—" She was twisting her fingers together, grimacing at the sidewalk. "I really wanna just talk with you," she finished.

"I can't, Sadie," he repeated, pleading. He couldn't do this—this was exactly what he called out of work to try to postpone—

"Lars, it's okay, I swear," she said, going up onto the bottom step. "I mean, we don't have to talk like, literally right now." She gave a laugh. "If you wanna take a minute, that's fine, I just think it'd really help to, y'know, hang out for a while and just...talk."

Lars's breathing was getting too shallow; an inhale hitched.

He shook his head again, pushing himself back against the wall, digging his bare feet into the wood boards beneath him.

"I'm just...I'm not...I can't talk, I can't do it. I'm—I'm not—I'm not, like, a regular person—it isn't normal, but I can't—I can't—"

His next breath rasped in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"Lars, hey, it's okay." Her voice came through, soft and genuine. "It's okay."

He opened his eyes again and she still had a gentle smile. She went up another step and sat down on the edge of the porch.

"I can wait here if you want, if you, like, need a minute. I know this is kind of no warning."

Lars shook his head again, feeling horrible.

"Don't wait," he said. "I gotta go back inside but I really, I _really _don't think I'll be back out, I swear, don't wait, okay?"

She didn't answer, just gave him the same warm smile, and he turned quickly back to the door and slipped back inside his house, and fought to catch his breath.

His legs felt weak and shaky underneath him, like they could give out at any moment. He quickly sat himself in the armchair and leaned forward, panting.

He didn't know what to do.

He'd had this grim kind of optimism that Sadie was just done with him now, that she'd realized she'd had enough, that every time she wanted something good from having him in her life, he was going to let her down, again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

It took him a while to calm himself down to the point that his breathing was okay. He kept kicking the heel of his foot against the base of the chair.

He hated himself so much.

He hated that he was so much worse than everyone. He noticed it all the time—around everyone he met—everyone was better than he was, they were different, they were special and they were good and they were strong and they liked to be around other people, they helped each other, they had amazing experiences, they loved to be alive, they got better with every passing day, they helped each other get better.

But there was something wrong with him, and he was missing some element of humanity, and he wasn't any good, and he wasn't going to enjoy life, and all these incredible things about life with other people were just something he could never have. He wasn't real, he wasn't a person. He wasn't ever going to have those magical yet ordinary connections that people had with each other, he wasn't going to experience that, he wasn't going to give that experience to someone else.

Something was wrong with him in a fundamental way. All he'd amounted to was what he was today—a pathetic, inferior waste of resources that couldn't do anything, couldn't even die. Nothing good was ever going to come from him. Being around people like Sadie—like Steven—it so often just showed him everything that he wasn't. Everything he could never imagine himself being. They were special, and incredible, and good. And he was nothing like them.

He felt sick. He hated himself, he hated feeling this way, he hated feeling like he was losing his mind.

His mom came into the room, combing her hair, which was still wet from a shower.

"I'm gonna go to bed in a minute, Lars," she said. "Your dad is too, actually. We both have work pretty early."

Lars wished it wasn't so hard for his parents to get time off, so that he didn't have to feel so guilty every time he had two days off in a row.

"Okay," he mumbled, rubbing his hands along his arms.

"What's wrong?" she asked. Lars couldn't look up at her.

"Nothing."

He drew further in on himself when he heard his mom sigh.

"Go easy on yourself, okay?" His mom stepped forward and touched his shoulder briefly. "Try to relax some."

Lars shrugged and looked down at his hands.

"You know we love you, right?"

He stalled by pulling his legs up onto the chair.

"Yeah," he said quietly.

She leaned forward and kissed the top of his head.

"Goodnight," she whispered into his hair. He lifted his head and tried his best to smile.

A few minutes after she left, he went into his room.

He hated himself so much.

If he was somebody different, he might be able to actually be happy. He might enjoy things. He might actually open a window and breathe the ocean air in the morning, or go for a walk on a late spring day just to have the flowers falling from trees swirl around him, instead of lying in bed and wishing he had it in him to actually do anything like that. He hated knowing that things _could _be nice. That he could be okay, that he could be good in so many ways—if he just wasn't himself.

Lars went and opened his notebook and and drew random, tangling clusters of dark lines, starting in the corner of one page, spreading to the center of the notebook, then onto the next page. He slowly and carefully filled both pages completely with markings.

He was going to need another notebook soon. He was running out of pages.

He felt a bit like he had to mark himself up too, so he just rolled up the leg of his sweatpants and drew X's above his knee. He stared at his bare skin for a second, then scratched his nails down his leg hard enough to leave harsh, reddened streaks along his calf.

_I hate you so much._

He stared at the scratches he'd given himself. It wasn't even close to being what he deserved.

He tugged open one of his desk drawers and began to dig through it, searching as thoroughly as he could through his impatience.

FInally, he pulled a paper out and held it in slightly trembling hands. It was a letter Sadie had written him a good while ago, sent when she was on vacation for a couple weeks with her mom, visiting family on the West Coast. She'd surprised him with the mail, having texted him occasionally while she was gone but giving no notice that she was going to send him a letter. He remembered how nice it had felt to get it, just to see his name written in bright green ink on the envelope and know that she'd done this for him.

The content of it had been ever more unexpected—it was the closest thing to a love letter he'd ever received. It wasn't full of clichés and it didn't even have the word "love" in it, Sadie never even mentioned what she thought about him. But it was filled with so much love that Lars had been amazed then, and it still amazed him now. It was only a bunch of recollections of dumb, trivial moments from work, when they were joking around with each other, but the way Sadie talked about those memories, like they were a joy to recall, and the detail with which she transcribed them, and the way that she talked about _him_—it made his heart beat fast—it made him feel happier, it gave him such a genuinely nice feeling—

He held the letter up in front of him, his hands were shaking badly now—

_Fuck you._

He hadn't hurt himself enough yet, he hadn't done anything bad enough to himself. He _really _didn't want to destroy this letter too, it was something that had been special to him, that he'd kept safe ever since he got it—but knowing how much it would hurt should just be further incentive to get rid of it. It was just a letter, anyways, it didn't really mean as much as he thought it did, she'd probably forgotten she'd written it a long time ago, she probably had sent it more as a joke than anything—

_Grow up and move on._

If he expected Sadie to let go of him, shouldn't he be trying to let go of her, too? Instead of holding on to this single sheet of paper as though it was the most important thing in the world, clinging to this flimsy evidence of affection—

He remembered kissing her—

Lars shut his eyes and bit down on his tongue and pulled the corners of the letter in opposite directions. He blinked his eyes open again as soon as he heard the ripping sound, and saw a long, even tear down the center of the writing. It twisted at him but he forced himself to finish it off, to tear it all the way in half—and then he stood there, a piece of the paper in each hand, looking back and forth between them.

He felt himself shivering, felt his breath catch in his chest. He closed his eyes again, dropped the pieces of paper to the floor, tried not to care about it—told himself if he just kept trying, eventually he'd stop caring about it—

He got the roll of tape from his desk and knelt on the floor, carefully aligning the two halves as perfectly as he could before beginning to tape the tear back together. He managed to still his hands as he did, laying each strip of tape with as much care and precision as he could manage. When he was done, he taped the back of it as well, and then slid it back into its drawer.

He already hated that he'd torn it, but he hated that he'd tried to fix it, too—he was horrible, he couldn't even manage to try causing himself pain without fucking it up.

He suddenly couldn't stand being in his room anymore. He went back out to the rest of the house and he couldn't stand being himself, being alone with himself, and he put the news on at a low volume and lay on the couch and listened to the white noise.

He didn't know what to do, he had no idea what to do, he didn't know what was wrong with him or what he was doing or what he could do to make it better—he didn't know how he could be helped, or why anyone would ever want to help him—

With all the effort he could muster, Lars started to feel seperate from himself, to isolate his thoughts and emotions and imagine that he wasn't trapped in the midst of them. He lay immobile for what seemed like ages, just listening to the quiet, overlapping voices from the TV without bothering to make himself understand them. He could just be still and silent and interact with nothing in the universe—not others, not himself, nothing.

He heard one program end, then much later, another.

He was afraid of getting up, of moving and thinking and then having to feel everything again. But then he convinced himself that he could just postpone it all, just deal with it tomorrow and be able to ignore everything for the rest of the night.

He knew it was a stupid and useless strategy, but he was a stupid, useless person.

He rolled himself off of the couch and switched off the TV.

Thoughts came to him one by one, refrains he'd directed at himself for years and years and years.

_What's wrong with you?_

_You're nothing. There's nothing special about you._

He went into the kitchen and got himself a glass of orange juice, sitting on a stool pulled up to the counter to drink it.

_You can't do anything right._

Why couldn't he just be a normal person? He clenched the cold glass in his hands.

The color of the sky through the window caught his eye. It was finally late enough that the summer sun had set, but there was still a glow of twilight on the horizon, bright but gentle colors of pink blending into violet blending into a deep, vivid blue. He stared out at it for a while, remembering how much he loved watching beautiful sunsets, remembering going for walks on his own, listening to music and watching the sun going down, the sky alive with color, the stars coming out one by one—remembering how long it had been since he'd done that.

He sighed heavily. He couldn't do something so nice to himself as go for another one of those dusk walks, but he could manage just letting himself look at the stars.

He unlocked the front door, swung it open, and froze.

"_Sadie?_"

She turned towards him, still seated on the steps of the porch, illuminated by the light of his house.

"Hey," she said with a light laugh.

"W-what are you—I said you shouldn't wait—"

"I know, I know..." She stood up, smoothing her dress and putting her phone away into her clutch purse. "It's okay, I wanted to wait."

"Wh—but you—" Lars felt light-headed and breathless and he couldn't take this, not another avalanche of stress flooding over him with no warning. "You—Sadie, it's been—it's had to've been two hours at _least_—"

"It's okay," she said softly. "I wanted to wait."

"But I didn't know you were here," he said, voice strained. "I didn't even come out here to—I didn't even know you were still _out_ here."

"...Do you want me to go?" She still spoke so gently to him, but he thought he could hear a bit of sadness in her tone.

He hated this. He hated being forced to establish himself as a disappointment over and over, for his disgusting and pitiful nature to be put on display against his will.

"You weren't supposed to stay," he insisted, and his voice broke pathetically at the end, and he just leaned against the door and stood and breathed because he was so fucking exhausted and didn't know what to do anymore.

"I wanted to," Sadie repeated, taking a slow step towards him. "I just...I really wanted to see you."

"Why?"

"I just..." She trailed off and gazed off down the street for a moment. She laughed suddenly. "Okay, this is gonna sound weird, but see—the other day I was carrying some groceries inside, right? And I left the door open, and Snap got out, which, you know, he kind of does a lot, so I didn't really think about it. But he usually just kind of wanders around the neighborhood and comes back in an hour because he's hungry."

Lars stared at his feet, completely unsure of what she was trying to tell him.

"And he wasn't back by the time we usually fed him, and he didn't show up for a few more hours after that, and, see...I wasn't really too nervous, I knew he'd show up eventually, but it kind of made me think..." She paused for a moment, he looked up and saw her watching the ground. "I mean, all the times he gets outside, I never really think about it much, I even forget sometimes...because even though he's gone, I know he's always back soon. And having to worry about it even a little this time, it just made me realize that I never really _know _he'll be back for sure. I kinda just take it for granted, y'know?"

She looked up at him then, and he was too focused on trying to understand her story to avoid meeting her eyes.

"I dunno," she said, blushing. "I mean, it all just made me think of you all of a sudden, about, how...you know...sometimes we argue about stuff and sometimes somebody needs space and just...when you get mad about something, I know you'll always let it go, but, um..."

"So...I'm your cat?" he asked, confused.

"Well...kind of, but not exactly, it's just...I know it sounds dumb but it's just like. I started thinking like oh, sometimes something leaves and comes back but...I don't ever really know for sure that it'll come back. And when there's actually something I can do about it, shouldn't I do it? And I thought, you know, you'd straight up told me about wanting to talk, and it'd been a while since you had, and I knew that we should, and that's...that's why I asked you about it today. And I know you said you didn't want to but...I felt like I had to really make sure."

"I..." Lars struggled to figure out how to explain the reasons he had for wanting to avoid a conversation. "It's just that...I'm not... It's like, if you were trying to talk about all this shit with a normal person, it'd be fine, but I'm—I'm _not. _I'm not the way that everybody is, there's just something..._wrong, _and I'm—I'm just—"

How do you tell someone you're really and seriously fucked up?

"I'm just—I'm so fuckin'—just so—"

"It's okay," Sadie interrupted quietly as his voice began to shake.

"No, it's _not,_" he said forcefully.

"Yes, it is."

"_It's not!_"

Sadie didn't say anything else and he refused to look at her. He felt so stupid and awful.

"Will you just...just stay out here with me for a while?" she said, voice as soft and quiet as it could be without becoming a whisper.

He brought a hand up to hide his face and twisted his other hand in the fabric of his sweatpants.

"You shouldn't've waited," he said again, hating how unsteady and rough his voice was. "You could've done—anything else, anything else would've been—" He had to stop for a shaky breath. "Anything would've been less of a waste of time, a-and—"

"It wasn't a waste of time," she cut in, voice now clear and firm. "This isn't a waste of time, Lars. I waited, just in case you changed your mind, and I did it because I wanted to. And yeah, sure, I could've been hanging out at home and there was a bunch of different stuff I could've been doing this evening, but you know what? I wanted to be doing this instead."

Lars pulled his hand away from his face but looked away from her, towards the house next door, glaring at the plants growing in the garden.

"Lars." Her tone was clear, she was asking him to look at her. But he couldn't. He wasn't going to.

His breathing was difficult again, it was happening way too many times in one day.

"This was the most important thing I could've been doing," she said.

"N-no it's not, it's _not_—"

"Stop it, _yes_ it _is._ I wanted the chance to talk to you, and that was the most important thing I could be doing, okay? I'm telling you exactly what I really think. There's nothing more important to me."

As she said those words, he broke. Tears flooded his vision too fast for him to hold them back.

"_Shit,_" he whimpered, and he hated himself, and he hated all this—that after everything, here he was, crying in front of Sadie all over again.

He turned his body away from her, brought both hands up to cover his face, but already his breathing was shivering and catching in quiet sobs, and it was so obvious.

"Hey," Sadie said, and he cringed and turned his head towards the wall. "It's okay."

He hated this. He hated this so much and it was so insulting to be doing this all over again and he just wanted to be alone, to be gone, to be dead.

He felt Sadie's hands on his arms and jerked away but there was nowhere to go, he was up against the wall of the house.

"Lars," she said quietly.

"Stop it," he gasped.

Sadie moved her hands along his arms, slow and steady, till her hands were near his wrists, and she squeezed her fingers around him. He tensed in her grip.

With an amount of force so small he could only just feel it, Sadie gently pulled on his arms. He resisted it momentarily, but when she gave a slightly firmer tug, he gave up and let her pull his hands down to his sides. Why should he bother to pretend he had any dignity at this point.

"It's okay, Lars," Sadie murmured. He stared straight ahead, biting down on his lip as his tears dripped steadily down his cheeks. He tried to fight it off with a few sniffs but it wasn't long before snot ran down to his mouth, and he couldn't breathe properly and so he sobbed aloud, and started to shake. He was so disgusting but he just couldn't hold it back at all.

He was startled to feel Sadie push her head against his stomach and squeeze his waist in her arms, hugging him tightly. He looked down at her tangled hair, frozen in place. He could feel his sobs giving stuttering pushes against the pressure of her embrace, and somehow it made him cry harder, and he was sure she was going to give up and let go of him. But she held on and rubbed one of her hands up and down his back.

It took only about half a minute until he was hit with the full effect of being hugged, and it didn't feel awkward at all anymore, it was just being held, and he didn't want it to stop, he couldn't bring himself to fight it off at all.

He pulled his arms out from under hers and she stepped back at the movement, let go of him. He wiped at his face some as he stepped around her and slowly sat himself down on the porch steps. He gave a trembling sigh and looked up at the stars in the sky through the blur of his tears.

Sadie walked over and sat down beside him, touching her knee to his, and rested the back of her hand where their legs met. He glanced at it, and he struggled with his thoughts but he knew how he felt and after a moment's pause, he lifted his hand and cried as he clumsily pushed it into her palm. She gave a slow exhale beside him and curled her fingers tight around his fist.

"Bad day?" she whispered eventually, and he sobbed in response, and she switched the hand holding his for her other so she could turn towards him and put an arm around his back. He sank towards her and she leaned her head on his shoulder and rubbed her thumb over his fingers.

They didn't move or speak for a long time, and Lars just cried, and looked at the stars, and felt the weight and warmth of Sadie leaning into him, felt her breathing softly against his neck.

Eventually his tears were falling more occasionally than before, and he gave a few heavy sniffs, and threaded his fingers between Sadie's.

"It's okay," she breathed, rubbing his back again. "It's okay."

Lars shivered and squeezed her hand and turned his head slightly to the side to touch hers, cheek brushing her forehead.

Sadie got both arms around him and gave him the tightest hug yet, and held it for ages, and he did his best to hug her back.

When she sat back up, she reached out and dragged the back of her fingers across one of his cheeks, wiping off some of the dampness there.

"I-I called out of work tomorrow," Lars confessed.

With a light stroke of her thumb, Sadie caught a newly fallen tear as it slid down his face.

"How come?"

He actually gave a small laugh.

"I was—I, um—" He sniffed. "I was just...scared to see you again."

"Huh? ...Why?"

He shrugged.

"It's—I guess it's kinda complicated."

Sadie giggled briefly and nudged his shoulder with hers.

"Well, I mean...maybe we could talk about it, huh?"

Lars exhaled a laugh and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Maybe," he said quietly.

A few more minutes passed in silence.

"Hey," Sadie spoke up brightly. "You know what we haven't done in forever?"

"...I dunno, what?"

"You know how sometimes we'd walk over to the gas station with the freezers and get those ice cream things?"

"You wanna walk all the way over there?" Lars asked, a bit incredulous.

"Sure, why not." She shrugged and smiled at him. "C'mon, it'll be fun. I could use some ice cream. I bet you could, too."

"Well—but—it's gotta be almost, like, fuckin' nine o'clock," he said. "It'll take like forty minutes to get over there and back, and—I mean, I called out, but if you gotta go to work and shit..."

"Here. You know what?" Sadie opened her clutch and took her phone out again. "I'll call out too, okay? And we don't have to worry about that at all."

"Wh—but it's so late already—"

She scoffed.

"They'll get over it. We'd have to do way worse than this before they'd even think about firing us, you know that. Besides, it's not like they aren't used to _your _sorry ass calling out every other day," she teased.

"Shut up, oh my god..."

"C'mon, let's do this," she said, descending the steps as she typed out a text. "There. 'I'm so sorry but, short-notice,' et cetera et cetara. It's taken care of, we can do whatever we want."

She looked up at him, still wavering on the porch, hugging himself with his arms.

"It'll be fun," she promised.

"I mean, I gotta...I don't have my wallet, I gotta go get...money, an' shit—"

"I'll buy you ice cream," Sadie insisted. "It's all on me. Come on, let's just go ahead and go."

"But I'm...I look like shit, and these freakin' pants, I look like I just woke up—"

"Nobody's gonna care. I swear, Lars, nobody'll care."

"I don't even have _shoes _on—"

"I promise, nobody cares about that either. This is the beach, it's totally fine."

"I—" He looked down at himself, he looked at Sadie, waiting for him on the sidewalk, bathed in the light of the stars and moon. "O-okay."

Sadie beamed.

Lars blushed and laughed and got the housekey that was hidden up on the tiny ledge of the porch's overhang and locked their front door, then walked over beside Sadie.

"C'mon," he said.

She laughed and led him down the sidewalk, and after they went a block he brushed his arm against hers, and she slipped her hand into his.


	6. Chapter 6

Lars held tight to Sadie's hand and refused to let himself shy away or loosen his grip. He couldn't think of a time they'd held hands that he'd regretted and it was like an established fact: holding Sadie's hand was always a good thing.

More than a good thing—for the first time in ages, it felt nice to exist. He felt almost okay, almost normal, and the fact that it was possible for him to be feeling that way so quickly, when he'd spent all day having an extended breakdown—

He started marvelling at the fact that feeling okay could scare him.

_People don't feel happy and upset at the same time. There's something wrong with you._

He wanted to let go of all those feelings he'd been having, panic and despair and consuming anger and all of it, but if they went away so easily, he'd just feel stupid and ridiculous and crazy. If everything he'd felt, everything that had been so unendurably awful, just vanished after a visit from a friend, how could it be taken seriously? By himself or by anyone else?

It scared him. If he and Sadie really and seriously talked, he wanted to be honest. But if he was honest about the kinds of thoughts and emotions he had, how bad they'd been, but how quickly his moods changed, the capriciousness of it all would seem laughable, he was certain of it.

_Sadie wouldn't laugh at you._

He squeezed her hand.

_She won't laugh._

She'd seen him get so upset he couldn't keep still, wringing his hands and twisting a heel against the floor and biting at his lip till he cut into the skin. She'd seen him get so nervous that he had trouble keeping balance with how hard his legs were shaking. She'd seen him forget how to speak entirely, stumbling through words and mixing them together, voice either way too loud or almost inaudible, punctuating his sentences with self-deprecating badly-timed laughter, knowing he was embarrassing himself and consequentially falling apart even more. She'd seen him hiding in the back room after a bad experience with customers made his anxiety and temper flare out of control, heartbeat reverberating through his chest, thoughts panicky and fogged, jumping at every sound and snapping at everything. She'd seen him get so angry he couldn't look at or speak to anyone, she'd seen him get so worked up worrying about scenarios in his head that he'd brought himself to tears.

He'd humiliated himself in front of her so many times. And she'd never once laughed at him—not even in her tone or in the things she said.

She wouldn't laugh, but. She was always seeing the worst of him, and it wasn't because she just happened to be around him at all the wrong times. It was regression to the mean. She wasn't getting a skewed sample, she was getting a more accurate picture of him. He was a bad person to be around way more often than he was even tolerable, much less enjoyable company. Even if she didn't yet fully realize that, the illusion could only last so long.

He really couldn't begin to invent a reason to expect Sadie to look out over the world, to see everything and everyone in it, and ever want to glance back and see him there with her. There was so much for her to do and be and there were so many people, so many people who were so much better than him. There was no reason she should keep him in her thoughts even outside of work on a daily basis. When she inevitably left the job behind and they didn't have that reason to see each other almost every day, there would be no reason to keep him in her life, besides as a memory that faded with time into a ghost, then the memory of a ghost.

And just to be with her for five seconds—it was so obvious how great she was. Even just looking at her, with the moonlight shining in the hair curling over her shoulders, with the breeze from the ocean tinging her nose and cheeks pink, with her steps even and determined, with her eyes bright and focused, with the blue of her dress complimenting her skin, the straps baring her shoulders, the laced edges across her thighs and chest—she looked amazing. It seemed inexplicable that there weren't a thousand people queued up to try to date her—he knew some people noticed, he saw the lingering, focused glance of customers and passersby.

And maybe she wasn't dating anyone because she just didn't want to right now, but if she ever wanted to get a date, she would certainly have her choice of candidates. And there was no reason for her to even give him the time of day, much less her undivided attention in that area.

Holding her hand was giving him butterflies in the worst way. It was amazing, it was awful, it was wonderful.

He was so scared that he was never going to be able to tell her anything about what was happening to him, about what he was like, because if she knew—

If she knew, if she could see him—

She'd realize exactly how shitty he was if he told her about the things he thought and did, the kinds of things he'd think and do all the time.

_I'm too fucked up,_ he thought. _I'm crazy inside and I'm bad all the time, it's so bad, I'm awful, and she's so much better than me, and I don't want her to know_—

_Either you lie to her all the time or she finds out how fucked up and stupid you are_.

For one thing, she wasn't always crying, whereas he could never stop himself. Get sad, cry. Get angry, cry. Get lonely, cry. Get overwhelmed, cry. Get anxious, cry. Get hurt, cry. Get stressed, cry. Get scared, cry. Anything. It'd only take a few seconds of a certain feeling and it was like a goddamn reflex.

It could overcome him in a matter of seconds. Like it was doing right now.

No matter how good he otherwise got at hiding it, he couldn't stop his breathing from giving him away.

"Hey, what is it?" Sadie asked softly, slowing her pace. Her fingers curled tight around his.

"It's okay," Lars said quickly. His voice was all over the place and it was horrible. "Sorry. Let's just—keep going."

But she stopped walking. And Lars stopped too.

"Um, I—" she started, before making a tiny choked noise in the back of her throat. Lars stared at the edge of the sidewalk, intent on making no movement or sound.

"I want to say something but I'm not sure how to say it," she said carefully. "It...might be a question? I don't know."

Lars coughed out a laugh and dried under his eyes with the back of his hand.

"That's okay. I don't have a fuckin' clue how to talk either. ...Like, ever."

Sadie laughed too, the same way he had, short and quiet but natural.

"I just...I don't really know how to do it, but, um." She laughed again. "I want to, like—I want it to be okay for you to tell me about, like, why you're upset? When things upset you? Because—because I don't always understand, and I wish I did, but I'm not—not great at it yet, but I want to try to be better at it, and...and well, you're kind of the expert on why you feel stuff. And—and I want to try to _help._ You know? When you're upset I want to be able to help. And, I don't know, sometimes just talking to someone about stuff helps you feel better. I don't know if that helps you? Because if it does, I—I think it would be awesome if you let me listen."

Lars shook and he knew she could feel it because she was holding his hand and even his fingers were twitching. He _wanted _to be able to confide all the shit in his head to someone else, but he'd always assumed that could only be an imaginary scenariofor him. He didn't have the kind of stuff to talk about that you _could _talk about, and he wasn't even sure he could ever put it into words, but if there was anyone he could begin to try explaining himself to, it'd have to be Sadie.

And now that she'd said what she had, saying nothing would still be telling her something, telling her that he didn't want to tell her things the way that she wanted him to. Which was true, and which wasn't true, and it was all a mess, but if nothing else, after she'd made herself say something awkward to him without being sure she wouldn't mess up or embarrass herself, it would only be fair to try telling her why he was crying again out of nowhere.

"Um, I just—I just kinda, uh, it's just that..." He fumbled with the sentence until it fell away from him entirely. "Shit," he whispered to himself. His brain still refused to work properly.

"Look, uh, is it okay if we keep walking? I think it, uh, helps me think. Kind of. Or, wait. Shit. Now I don't wanna walk. I wish we were there already oh god I don't fuckin know—"

"Whoa, Lars, it's okay."

"I know, I _know _it is, it's just me, it's all me, I do shit like this, okay? And I hate it, cuz I mean, look at this, it _sucks, _nothing's even _happening _and nothing's fucking _wrong _a-and I'm _still_—we're just trying to talk! And get fucking ice cream and I _know _everything's okay, everything's great, everything's better than it's ever been in—in fucking _forever_, and I'm _still _freaking out, and I don't know why I do this! Because I _know _that a fuckin' normal person doesn't _do _this shit and I don't know why _I _do, but I do, and I don't know why, and I just k-keep _doing _this—"

He heard a noise and looked towards Sadie to see she'd opened the clasp of her purse and was digging through it.

"I'm sorry I keep crying all the fucking time," he gasped, wiping his face off as if it would make him stop. "L-like it's fuckin' embarrassing and I hate it and it just comes out of nowhere all the time, a-and I hate crying like a kid—when I'm—I'm—I _hate it,_" he said, sobs tugging at his words. "I know it's like, fuckin' overdramatic or something but I'm not _trying _to be, it's _embarrassing._"

_At least you can't embarrass yourself in front of her more than you already have._

"I swear to god I'm just. There's something wrong with me and I don't know why I can't just be normal, and I'm just so fucking...bad at. Being a person. And I'm—I—I was crying five seconds ago too cuz today was really horrible, really fuckin' bad, and—and I kind of—I was kind of a mess, and like I didn't know how to stop, and I did all this shit and I thought all this shit and I swear to god I'm just like, I don't know, I-I'm crazy or something? L-like if I tell you, you're gonna—y-you'll—fuckin' _hell_—" he swore as he began crying too hard to continue without stopping to wipe at his face. "_Fuck_—m'sorry—"

He covered his eyes with one hand and turned his face away, fighting to keep as quiet as possible. It was all embarrassing and everything happening was so confusing that he was exhausted. For Sadie to come out of nowhere and stay there in spite of him, and to be soft and careful with him and do nothing but take him for a walk, _nothing but that, _and he was crying and crying and talking himself in circles and acting so stupid that he wanted to disappear and for everyone to forget he existed.

"Shit, I'm sorry," he whispered a few times under his breath. He sniffed and squeezed his eyes shut to make extra sure he wouldn't accidentally glimpse Sadie from behind his fingers, as if not being able to see her would make her unable to see him. He rubbed a bare foot against the curb, trying to focus himself on that feeling instead. It wasn't rough enough and he couldn't do anything more without being even more humiliating and—

"Here." Sadie took the hand at his side and put something that felt plastic but soft against his palm, and he uncovered his face to see she'd given him a packet of tissues. As if on cue, he sniffed loudly.

"Um," he said, wrestling his shaky voice towards steadiness. "Thanks."

He obligingly pulled a couple of tissues out and wiped at his eyes and cheeks, at his nose, pulled out another tissue and wiped along his jawline. He didn't have anything to say or do so he just waited for whatever was going to happen next.

"...You—you don't have to be embarrassed, y'know."

Lars squeezed the balled-up tissues in his fist.

"Seriously, Lars, please don't think..." She paused, and planted her feet on the sidewalk as though recentering her balance. " Okay. So, you, uh. Sometimes you...cry a lot."

Lars exhaled through his teeth.

"Ah, yeah. I know."

"I mean...I don't really...I don't know what that's like, you know? I mean I cry too but I don't...not the same way, kind of. And I don't...I don't think it's, um, I don't think it's bad when you cry. Like, I know some people think it's like. You know. They like, look down on people if they think they're sensitive or something, but I—I promise that I'm not gonna like, judge you or whatever. It's okay if you get upset. I know it happens."

"Everybody gets upset," Lars mumbled.

"I know. I just mean..." Sadie sighed and rocked her weight back and forth from her toes to her heels. "I mean, I—I guess I _don't_ know, is the thing. Like, I don't always know why you cry sometimes but I know that doesn't mean you don't have a reason? I just don't know what it is. And—and if it would help at all for you to be able to, y'know, say what that reason is...you could do that. And...if you can't, that's okay too."

Lars looked over at her again, and she was looking down at her feet.

"Uh, okay." He clenched his fists and tried as hard as he could to force his thoughts into words. "I'm gonna, um, I'm gonna try to like. I'm not trying to like, _not _tell you the truth about shit, but I gotta go ahead and say that it's just. It's really fuckin' hard because some of this shit just sounds so weird and bad and—and _I _don't even know what's going on with it, so like, you kinda _hafta _pretend that it's like, more normal than it is like all the damn time so that people...don't stop treating you normally."

Sadie looked up at him, and he didn't turn away, but he addressed the knuckles of her left hand.

"Like, it's—it's hard to even explain some of this shit because I can barely explain it to myself, okay? Like I can try, and if you really, really mean it that you wanna hear, I can try, but just...you gotta know that I don't even like, have a good answer sometimes. And it's hard to...to talk about, because, um..."

He breathed and found it hard to finish the sentence, the thing he wanted to tell her was keeping him from telling her. The pause grew drawn-out but she didn't start speaking. He was half-expecting her to say something after a solid minute had passed but she just stood and waited. He pushed himself to speak, he fought against everything holding him back from making a sound, and like a parody of himself his face burned and his throat tightened and a couple of tears slid down his face.

"I'm. Scared to tell people about this stuff," he managed, voice gravelly and subdued. And it was all that he could manage. He stood there, crying, and hating himself for never being able to stop it.

"_God_, I feel so _stupid,_" he choked out.

Sadie's hand was on his arm.

"No, you're okay, you're alright," she said.

"It's so fucking embarrassing, oh my god—"

"It's just me, it's me, it's fine. You're fine, I promise."

Lars sucked in a wheezing breath.

"C'mon, it's okay. Just come with me, we're almost there, just a couple blocks." She squeezed his arm. "It's okay. Just follow me."

Lars let her take his hand again and kept up with her quick steps, lagging half a pace behind her. For once he was so glad that Beach City was such a quiet place, that there was hardly any signs of life at night. That it was just the two of them, no one could hear them or see them, because for the life of him he couldn't imagine humiliating himself more if he tried.

_What are you doing what are you doing?_

_I'm so stupid, oh my god I can't believe after all this_—

They rounded the corner of the gas station, where a single car was parked out front, one van was at a pump. Sadie walked him past the windows to the wooden bench positioned in front of the the brick wall of the building, and let go of his hand. Lars wiped uselessly at his face with the handful of tissues he'd squeezed into a fraying ball and he sat down, keeping his head down as he stared at his lap.

"Gimme just a minute, okay?" Sadie brushed the back of her hand against his knee. He nodded and listened to her go into the store.

He breathed and rubbed the soles of his feet against the concrete.

He felt so nice and so horrible at once.

Part of him was insisting that this was stupid, he was being so stupid, this was an awful awful awful idea and it was so obvious how terrible this was, hadn't he just spent all that time thinking it over, hadn't he realized that what he was going through with Sadie was the same thing he'd gone through over and over again in life. Wasn't this just the same lesson he refused to learn, the one that hurt him every time? Just how useless and awful must he be, to spend so much time thinking about it and to put so much serious effort into deciding that he was just being dumb and selfish and misguided with his feelings for Sadie, and then to throw all of it out the window after just a few minutes?

And another part of him was so in love with her, and was heart-poundingly thrilled at the idea that she might love him too. It was a part of him that had been growing for a long time, from when he was first delighted to realize that he considered Sadie an actual friend and that she seemed to like him too, when they unexpectedly slept together and for some reason he'd been afraid she wouldn't like him anymore after that and was relieved when their friendship still existed, when ages later it was even more unexpected when Sadie seemed to suggest she might have a crush on him and he spent the rest of the day thinking about it while soothing his throat with cold tea and honey, when he was confused about his own feelings and their relationship but still comfortable with her and glad she was in his life, when it all came together when his own crush smacked him in the face and it all just made so much sense.

But the part of him that was afraid that the closer Sadie grew to him, the greater the chance that she would find out she hated him and it would hurt him even worse—that part had been growing, too.

But this was so much—Sadie had been thinking about him even though they were kind of fighting, and she'd decided she still wanted him around, and she'd tried to talk to him, she tried to talk to him again even after he reacted badly, she waited for _hours _to see him with no guarantee she'd even get to, she wasn't scared away when he was angry, she wasn't scared away when he was crying, and now she was buying him food because she knew he liked it—it _had _to mean that she really did like him.

It was too much to ask himself if she loved him. It was too much to ask himself how much he wanted her to, and why.

The door pushed open again and Sadie came out and she handed him a chocolate-coated ice cream bar on a stick. He mumbled his thanks and started working the plastic covering open as she sat on the bench beside him and unwrapped her own ice cream.

Lars bit off the corner and liked the contrast of the cold with the warmth of the air around them.

They sat quietly. Lars looked at his hands.

"Can you tell me about, uh..." Sadie began.

Lars tensed.

"Can you tell me about what you've been thinking, um, with the stuff on the island?" she finished.

Lars stopped moving, and could feel the blush heating his face.

"Okay," he said quietly, before he could even think about it.

_You're so stupid. Don't do this. If you get hurt by this it'll be your own fault._

"I'm." He stared out at the darkening road. The car at the pump was pulling out of the lot. "I'm, I dunno, um." He bit off another piece of ice cream, crushed the chocolate shell with his tongue. He didn't know where to begin.

"...Why'd you do it? I still just. I'm still. Confused," he asked weakly.

He heard Sadie give a slow exhale beside him.

"I—I really didn't think it through. I guess I was just...so convinced that you'd feel better if you got to relax and if...I could help you relax. I just did it but then I felt like it was a bad idea but it was too late to fix it and then...pretty soon I was too nervous to tell you. I knew you'd be mad and I was scared of you finding out."

"I _was _mad," Lars said, feeling a little bolder just with the memory of it. "I—I _am_."

Sadie didn't answer. Lars took another bite of ice cream and gripped the edge of the bench.

"I mean, like," he began slowly. "Honestly, I really. I liked some of the...sometimes things were really nice, but. It was really scary, y'know, like I swear I thought we might fuckin' die, I thought we'd lost _everything, _y'know, like—our whole _lives. _It was so fuckin' scary and...and it felt like _shit _sometimes. And I swear to god the whole time I thought you knew that too. I thought—I dunno. I thought you. _God, _Sadie, it was _so _fucking _embarrassing_—"

He shivered and squeezed his eyes shut.

"I just really hate to think of what if I hadn't found out, y'know, like, what if it went on even longer? W-what if. I think about what if I'd never found out, and that fuckin' kills me, Sadie, I _hate _that. I mean, what if you never told me, what if I never knew, oh my god it's so bad to think about. I mean, you gotta know, I thought _so much _that you were going through everything the same as I was. Like, I don't know what to even say, cuz it made it feel like none of it was real anymore. It wasn't just part of it, the whole fuckin' thing was gone, everything that happened that'd been really nice, _everything _felt like. Like I'd just been tricked, and none of it's real, and none of it counted anymore or even _meant _anything."

He scraped his feet against the sidewalk some more.

"I mean, I...I like you, y'know, and I dunno, for a while there I just felt like. Like I could really. I don't know, it's stupid, but it just felt. It felt so fuckin' _real, _and I—I really _liked _how real it felt. It really...it meant a lot, I guess, to me. And so when it turned out it wasn't real it was like it all got—got taken away, and it's dumb but it was just, like, losing something really important, and I was really mad that you'd been. Y'know, that you'd known we were actually okay. The whole time. I just. It hurt a lot. It—it hurts."

He took another bite of ice cream, focused on the flavor of it.

"And I'm sorry I was in a bad mood for so long that you wanted to try to fix it, but you can't get rid of it. I mean, fuck, it's happening again but it's been even worse now than it was then. And I know it'll happen again later. And I guess I'm not. LIke, _as _mad as I was at first about it cuz I mean. It's like. It's kinda nice I guess, if you were tryna make me feel better, but like. I'm just tellin' you now, if you want that shit to go away, it's not gonna. I _know._ It just happens and it doesn't go away even if you want it to and it makes everything shitty and I. I don't know if you're gonna wanna be friends with me like forever, cuz you're gonna figure out that I'm not good."

Another bite.

"It sounds stupid to say but I want stuff to be real with you, but I think...I think the real me isn't very good and I think if you find that out you're not gonna like me. Sorry all this sounds so stupid."

He was grateful that the kind of crying he was doing now was quiet, just tears falling slowly down his face, his nose starting to run again, nothing that was much more noticeable beyond making his voice and breathing a bit rougher.

"I like you," Sadie almost whispered.

"I know," he answered quickly. "I like you, too. A lot. You're my best friend." He wanted to look at her but he couldn't bring himself to. "The best one I've ever had, but like, I've had a few best friends before, and it got fucked up every time. Every time, and I hated it so much and I don't want that to happen anymore. I just. I always gotta pretend to be better than I am cuz I'm just. I'm not..._right._ I'm just. It's bad. It's so bad, Sadie."

"I...I don't think you're not good."

Lars gave a breath of a laugh.

"But I don't know how to show you all the stuff with me that's just bullshit," he said. "Cuz all I do is hide it from people so that I can like. Get on with shit without everyone hating me. Like, I don't know how _not _to pretend I'm better than I am. It feels like I'm always lying, but I can't tell the truth, cuz I've _always been _lying. I don't know."

He sniffed and kicked at the leg of the bench.

"I mean, you didn't always like me, did you? Like, you gotta have times you think I'm an asshole, y'know. I mean, I know you did. I know you prob'ly still do. It's kinda like that, like, y'know how you thought that you could make me feel better with that island stuff? But it doesn't really work that way anyway. That's kinda what it's like. I'm not... You don't get better stuff from me, y'know? Like sometimes I'm in a better mood on my own. But that shit feeling comes back and then I'm just pissed at everything again. I mean, sometimes I'm okay, I know I am, but I always go back to being a jerk."

"I know you're not a bad person," Sadie said. "I know you aren't."

"I _am,_" Lars said. "Everyone always wants to think I'll get better, that like, you can look at all my bullshit and be like 'oh that's not what he's always gonna be like,' but I _am. _And, y'know, what if I always am? What's gonna happen when you know for yourself that I don't get any better than I am? Everyone's always saying they like, they believe in me or something, but that just makes me feel worse cuz I _know _that means they're gonna be disappointed. Like, this happens all the time, Sade. I don't have friends anymore cuz I learned that I just. I _can't _have 'em_. _I'm not a regular person, there's all this shit wrong with me, and I'm just. I'm boring and stupid and bad and I'm just."

He squeezed the tissues in his fist again.

"I mean, what kind of person just fuckin'—sometimes I just feel like I wish everybody who loved me would just _stop,_ y'know? Not cuz I want them to, I just want to stop being cared about by anybody cuz I'm so pissed at myself. At everything. Y'know, I swear to god sometimes I just get this fuckin' feeling like I _want _to fuck up every good thing I have, I wanna be a dick to everyone at once so that they hate me. Like, who fucking even feels that way? I just feel sometimes like everything's shit and I hate everybody including me, and how stupid is that, and I get so mad that it's bullshit for everybody. And I mean, I'm stupid enough already, even when I'm just having a regular day I forget how not to be an asshole, cuz I _am _one. It's just, _fuck_, who does this shit?! I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't, I swear to god I don't..."

"_Lars, _you're not a bad person and you know that, I know you do, I know _you _know that you do. Even...even when you do stuff that isn't, you know, nice. I know you're nice because I see it and because you...you care when you hurt people. And. So do I. And I know that I hurt you and I want to figure out how to deal with it because I care about you, too."

"But what if I never get any different from how I am now?" Lars asked, legs shaking a little now. "I mean, like, people can deal with me for a while cuz they think I'm gonna be better, they find out I'm shitty but then they hang around cuz they think it goes away, but it doesn't, and I don't get any different, and eventually everybody just fucking has enough of me. You know? I just. I don't want you to think that like. Oh my god I sound so stupid and I swear to god I'm not fishing for compliments I fucking swear I _mean _it, I'm shit I'm just shit I'm trying to be as real as I can and I'm telling you I'm _shit._ I'm." He wiped his nose. "I'm just not _good_ for _anyone_, I mean. I had a real bad day today and I. I did all this shit, and I..."

Lars looked down at his lap again, at his legs. Where there were some rows of scars, newer than the ones climbing up his arms, hidden on the inside of his thighs where nobody else would ever find them. Where the only person who saw them would be him, feeling them as he brushed a hand over his body, seeing them when he looked at himself in the mirror. Where they could remind him that he had so much potential to disappoint everyone, that he could lie to others and to himself, that he could fail anyone and everyone. These light lines like a secret brand, marking him a liar, someone hiding away the worst parts of himself.

"Sometimes the stuff I do, I feel really. I feel like shit, and I just _feel _so much. And it's not fuckin' normal, and I don't know what's wrong with me, but I do all this shit, and it's not _normal._ I'm not a normal person, Sade, I'm. I swear I'm sorry. But I just know that you _shouldn't _like me, and it's like, no matter how long we're friends there's _always _a point where everybody realizes that, they realize they shouldn't be around me, and it all gets fucked up and I hate it and I don't want that to happen here, y'know? I—I don't want there to be any, like, expectation that this is gonna be great, cuz that just makes it so much worse when it's over. And—and it's not just that I do things that are shit sometimes, it's like. The way I am, too, it's just _bad _and gross and awful and _I _hate being around it, I know dead sure that nobody in the fuckin' world would possibly like being around me all the time. And there's just. So many other people—"

Sadie grabbed his hand.

"Lars," she said, and he chewed a piece of ice cream off and stared at the ground.

"Lars, y'know when we first met, and we kinda started to be friends finally?"

"Yeah."

"Uh, well, for a really long time, I was like, totally convinced that you didn't really like me. Because, I dunno, you just didn't seem to care about anything, and I just thought you must have your own group of friends, and that you'd never be interested in being friends with somebody like me."

Lars was silent, taking it in.

"And like, I didn't think that there was anything about me that would _give _you a reason to pay any attention to me. Cuz, you know, we were just working together at this job. And. Honestly, um..."

Sadie trailed off and Lars glanced over to see her fidgeting nervously with the hem of her skirt.

"I...I've never really had a lot of friends either," she said quietly, and Lars gripped both the bench and the stick of his ice cream and dug his toes against the sidewalk as he realized with zero doubt that she was telling him a personal secret.

"I just never really thought it was easy to make friends, or get close to people, and I was always... Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is I know what it feels like to know that there's so many people everywhere and be afraid that nobody would ever have a reason to be interested in you out of all of them. I think everyone's scared of that."

"I...but..." Lars breathed, squeezed his leg. "It's not just that I'm like...not exciting or special or anything, it's like, I'm so shitty, and not everybody is, and I'm so gross to be with so much of the time, and like, nobody's like that. So it's like. There's a lot more of everyone else and they're pretty much all _better _than me."

Sadie's hand twitched on top of his.

"Lars, I _like_ you," she said.

"I know," he repeated miserably.

"No, oh my god shut up for a second, I really like you. I'm not saying it cuz it's nice, I'm not saying it to try to make you feel better, I'm saying it cuz it's the _truth._ You can't be sure that I'm gonna end up hating you or whatever, okay? I'm telling you now, don't tell yourself that I don't like you, don't tell yourself that I don't care about you, don't tell yourself you're not worth any time or thoughts or anything, whatever I wanna give you, okay. And—and I get that it might not be as easy to trust me right now, but I swear I'm not lying. I can't even think of a reason to. And...I get that you're afraid of what might happen in the future. But for now...you can't decide for me that I don't like you, y'know? However I feel about people is something I figure out. And I know how much I really like you. And by the way thank you for telling me I'm your best friend, because...it means a lot."

Lars let out a shaky breath.

"I-I...it does?"

"...Yeah."

Sadie rubbed her fingertip back and forth along his knuckles in a tiny motion that seemed like the biggest thing in the world.

"Like all day I wanted to kill myself," Lars said, followed by "holy shit," followed again by "that was so stupid I'm sorry," followed immediately by starting to cry once again, followed immediately by more cursing and apologizing.

"..._What?_" Sadie's voice was simultaneously quiet and strained and Lars was filled with humiliation and why had he just let that come out of his mouth without even thinking and what was _wrong _with him and what a stupid stupid thing to do and way to go, there was no way to undo that now.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," he said, drawing in on himself, pulling his hand away from hers to hide his face from view, hunching over his ice cream, chewing on the edge as he tried to force himself to stop crying. Not much of what he was doing was successful. "For fuck's sake, like, I don't even know how to _talk._"

"Oh my god," Sadie said weakly. Lars felt her hand touch his waist, her palm and fingers pressed flat against him and curving over onto the side of his back. It was only because he was already completely tensed up that he didn't flinch in surprise.

"What _happened?_"

Lars focused on keeping a few breaths as even as he could, slow inhale, long exhale, slow inhale—

"...What?" he replied finally.

"What—you—what—" Sadie fumbled, the pressure of her hand against him increasing slightly. "You...wanted to kill yourself?"

Lars sniffed and let out a sigh, wiping at the dampness on his cheeks with the back of his wrist.

"I mean. Yeah," he grudgingly confirmed, figuring there was no use in trying to back out of it now.

"_Why?_"

"Cuz—just cuz it was a fuckin' bad day," he answered, and bit the last pieces of ice cream off the stick.

"Lars, what even happened? Why'd you wanna do that?!"

Her voice was so tinged with distress that Lars made himself turn a little bit towards her.

"It's not like I _actually was _gonna, like, it's not even that I felt like I really would, or whatever," he said. His mouth tasted like ice cream still, his words about wanting to be dead all coming out flavored with vanilla. "I just _wanted_ to. Cuz stuff was really shitty, I felt really awful, and sometimes I just feel like that. ...Like, that I don't wanna be alive, y'know, and even though it's not like I'm actually like. Trying to die."

Sadie was quiet for a moment and Lars wished he was bold enough to look back at her so he could try to figure out what she might be thinking about any of this.

"It's—it's just a way I feel," he said, "Like, please...please don't freak out about it. I just. It's something that happens sometimes and it feels like shit and I've never told anybody else about it before. So don't—don't like think that it's like, it means I'm about to die, I've never even tried anything like that. It's just how I feel."

As much as he knew Sadie wasn't the kind of person to run off and start a huge deal all at once, he was very aware of being afraid that anyone who knew about this would panic and get everyone focused in on him like a laser, firing off questions at him and watching his every move, giving him the worst kind of attention that wouldn't increase his chances of feeling better at all.

"But..." she finally said, voice low and subdued. And then she was quiet for a long time.

"I wasn't _gonna_ kill myself," Lars said slowly. "I _wanted _to. It's...I kinda...gotta know that you get the difference."

"I guess so," she said, letting her fingertips slide off of his waist. "I mean, I don't, I don't _get _it. Like...I understand what you're saying about the difference, but I don't get...wanting to die, if you don't also want to make yourself die?"

"Sometimes I want that too. But it's still different from like, actually doing it. Y'know."

"Yeah, but. God, Lars, this is...it's _scary._"

That twisted at him. It was a firm reminder of why he kept this to himself in the first place.

"Sorry...I shouldn't've told you. It's not like it's something you can do anything about. I just. It's been this really big thing and keeping it a secret, especially when I've been feeling it... It just. It hurts pretty bad. It's all bullshit."

He took a few more moments to just focus on breathing slowly and evenly.

"Look, Sadie," he said, trying hard to sound as calm as he could, so that Sadie wouldn't sound so tense, so quiet. "The first time I realized I was feeling like that, and the first time I like, even thought for a second about...y'know. Killing myself. It really scared me, too. But I've never done anything. And every time I feel like this, no matter how fuckin' bad I wish I wasn't alive, I still know I have to be. I _know, _cuz like, I get so fuckin' mad about it. Even though I wanna be dead so much, I _know _so much that I can't be that it fuckin' pisses me off so much. The way it's always been, it's not gonna happen."

He was looking down at the ground again. But then, either from him turning towards Sadie, or her moving closer to him, their knees bumped together, and then neither of them moved them apart. Even through the thick fabric of his sweatpants, he could feel her. He gave the slightest, lightest, tiniest push against her knee. Having some point of contact with her always felt like it meant something, like it was communicating something back and forth between them, like they were holding hands.

"I mean. I didn't want to tell you, or anybody, but I guess also I kinda did..." he said slowly. "I mean, it really sucks when I feel this way, and I don't wanna let anybody know, but at the same time it's so fuckin' shitty to feel this way and nobody has a fuckin' _clue_ about it. Like, I know that nobody's gonna know if I don't tell 'em and I know that I don't _wanna _tell anybody, but it's such a huge deal to me and nobody else ever knows about it and...it makes me feel like I'm not even _real._ And sometimes I just wish like, I dunno, when people have a ton of friends and no matter how bad things get they can just call someone up, and you have so many awesome friends and everyone loves you so much that you can always get somebody to hang out with you, y'know, and you don't have to feel so shitty, or at least not so lonely, or at least you get distracted—"

Their arms were close enought together that he was aware of it.

"It just fuckin' sucks, today fuckin' _sucked _and it was so bad, I've had a lot of bad days lately but oh my god today was so bad, and it just feels like I...I dunno, it drives me crazy being on my own sometimes and not being able...having to just be alive. I just. I get so mad, at everything, at myself, at everybody. And it feels like shit, being so mad and just, having _nothing _I can do with it. It's so stupid, I get so mad, and it's the only time anybody notices that something's up, and all they get from it is that I'm just some shitty jerk. Which like, yeah, okay. But I just wish that...that wasn't _all _that everybody saw ever, but whatever, cuz whenever I'm with people I either want them to ignore me, or I fuck up if I'm talking to them cuz I don't know how to be a person, or nobody notices me anyways unless I'm—I'm just losing it somehow and doing something stupid and loud and crazy and everyone notices and...and..."

He dug his toes in against a crack in the sidewalk.

"I...I guess I really wanted to tell somebody. And I mean. I wanted to tell, um, you. Because of course it's not like I could tell anyone else even if I wanted to. Because...because. Fuck, I don't know. I don't know. I just want someone to _know? _And—and—" He slumped forward, putting his face in one hand. "I mean, around you, I can just say stuff sometimes, I guess cuz I can trust you—"

It was like a weight was draped over his shoulders.

"I always feel like. Like maybe I can trust you with just, with everything—even when I don't have any like, actual reason, I just _feel _that, but—" He gripped his knees. "D'you get it, Sadie, cuz now I feel like it's just me being stupid, I _know _you're always trying to do good stuff and I know you-you're nice and shit but now it just feels like it'd be stupid to just trust how I feel about anything cuz I trusted it _so much _on that fuckin' island, Sadie, I thought we might die and I knew how much I needed you there, y'know, I knew we needed you, I knew I did, like my whole stupid life that I don't even want sometimes, I felt like, you know, I trusted you with my whole fuckin' _life. _I _did. _And—and more than that, you know, it wasn't just the whole survival thing, it was—I—I really—"

Their knees weren't touching anymore, he hadn't noticed it happening and didn't know if it was him or Sadie who'd pulled away; he couldn't feel the nearness of her arm anymore.

"I just really thought I could like, trust you with _everything, _with _anything,_ it wasn't some kinda joke, I really, really thought...I prob'ly would've told you _anything,_ Sadie, just—just _anything. _And that's such a stupid big deal, I've never—it's never _been _that way. And it meant so, so much, it felt like such a huge fuckin' deal, but then I... Y'know, when I found out. That like, we hadn't actually needed to survive, and all that—all that trust I thought I was giving you—all the trust I thought you were giving _me, _the way we were, it was fake, it wasn't _real_, and it made me feel _so stupid,_ and—and _everything_ I felt, so much of it actually _was _so good and so important to me and it was like nothing else in my whole dumb life but now it's gone, Sadie! I can't _feel _that anymore! I don't even get to have the fuckin' memories of any of it cuz now I know they aren't real either. It's all _gone _and it's just me being stupid and embarrassed and I don't _want _to trust you this much again already but I just _do, _but I _shouldn't, _and I just got done learning a whole stupid lesson about me being an idiot and telling you shit that I shouldn't and just trying to dump all this crap you didn't ask for on you, and I've been thinking about it every day for stupid fuckin' ages, and now here I am all over again, being stupid and embarrassing and telling you shit that I shouldn't tell anybody and giving you these stupid huge secrets that I never tell anyone and _god!_"

He brought his other hand to his face and hunched down even further. He knew it was dumb to just huddle his body up and hide his face and shut his eyes and pretend like he or the rest of the world would disappear, but no matter how accepting Sadie was he couldn't stop being ashamed of crying. Especially since he was doing it over and over and over. He could hear her breathing beside him, quiet, rhythmic.

"Th-the thing is, Sade...all this shit with me, the stuff that's so gross and awful, it doesn't all go away when I'm in an okay mood, and even when it does it's only—only a matter of time till it's back. You can't fix it just by being nice to me. People are always nice to me cuz they think it'll be over soon and...and that I'll go back to being okay again cuz how could I keep being so shitty around someone who's being so _nice? _Only they're—they're gonna realize that no matter how nice they are it just doesn't pay off. I mean, sure, sometimes I'm just in a bad mood, but sometimes it's...like, a _bad mood. _And that doesn't have anything to do with how good everything around me is, and nobody else can fix it, and it's nobody else's fault, and. And how long were you gonna have kept us on the island, I mean, I—I seriously don't know the answer to what you were even _waiting _for like...this—this isn't even some rhetorical bullshit. W-what did you think that staying there was gonna do?"

He sniffed and wiped his face on his shoulder.

"I just...liked being with you so _much, _Sadie, I still...I still sometimes wish so fuckin' much that it _had _been real and I get so mad and I feel so stupid knowing it wasn't, a-and—"

Sadie gave a soft, rough noise that prompted his body to move before he consciously understood what was happening. He jerked upright, uncovered his face, and looked right at her, and the sight of tears running down her pink face made him flinch in another involuntary reaction.

"Oh..." His voice came out small. "Jeez, Sadie, I didn't—I..."

"N-no, don't worry, it's not your fault," she said through a shuddering breath. "You're not doing anything wrong. I'm just..."

Lars gripped his knees and he was feeling a lot all at once, so much so fast that he couldn't process the individual elements of it, but to his bewilderment he could tell that something about his reaction felt strangely positive. It was like his mood was shifting again, but less of a lurch into happiness that was sure to swing harder back in the opposite direction—it felt softer but stronger, moving deep under the crashing, conflicting feelings in his head that had been making him feel incoherent, confused, imbalanced, hazy—

For the first time in how long? Since the island? It felt like he was shaking off this shroud of frantic, furious, panicked feelings that were suffocating; like his head had finally breached the surface and his feet had touched on solid ground. He felt like a real person again, like he could think again, like he wasn't lightheaded and vague and like he didn't have to be so damn scared of himself and everything.

One of the things that fucked with his head more than anything was that he could get worse and worse and feel so fucking bad that it was killing him, but it was so intrinsically twisted up in his nature to hide it, he was so good at taking kind of a bad mood, from boredom and inconvenience and irritation to heartbreak and rage and despair, and having the only thing that showed be an inhospitable anger that no one could decipher and no one wanted to tolerate—he would feel so shattered and miserable and desperate, and nobody would notice, and he would feel like it didn't matter, like his feelings were less real, and that cycle started up of making him feel worse which made him feel more invalid which made him feel worse which made him feel more invalid, until—

Until he realized he _did _want to tell Sadie what he'd been going through, and he understood better why he wanted to, he understood better why he'd felt so scared by his own feelings lately, why he didn't have to be, why he'd been so upset by the island. He got why it felt bizarrely refreshing to have Sadie brought to tears over what he told her, it had shocked him but he had just been so surprised that for once, for once finally, someone had gotten a picture of how he felt and they had reacted in a way that gave him affirmation.

He told Sadie he felt like shit and here she was, she heard him, she listened, she reacted.

She sniffed and wiped under her eyes with her knuckles.

Lars wiped his own face with the underside of his forearm, and he reached out and slid his palm over the back of her hand and interlaced their fingers. She drew a breath and her fingers gave his a twitching squeeze.

"Sadie," he said.

"Yeah."

"I'm not telling you this shit cuz I want...cuz I wanna be helped with it or anything, okay?"

She sat still and quiet beside him.

"I—I think it always...it feels a lot of the time like people are just gonna want to be around me cuz they're hoping I'll get different, cuz they're trying to make me better or something? But I don't—" His breathing tightened and his voice hardened. "I don't want that."

A car drove by, and Lars watched Sadie as it passed. Her crying was always somehow more dignified and subtle than his and it tended to end faster. Her face was still a bit flushed though as her gaze moved back and forth along her lap.

"Like..." He began quietly. "It's fine if...if people help me, too, but I hate thinking that it's the _only _reason anyone wants to, I don't know, ever talk to me or deal with me or be friends or whatever. You know? Like...it just makes me think everyone is only disappointed when I'm the way they want me to be, or they have to be totally wrong about what I'm like to even be there in the first place, or...or it's always just a matter of time before they give up on me."

He relaxed the tension of his hand on hers, but didn't move it away.

"I, uh. I don't wanna have people with me cuz they're just trying to help me. I—I just want...to feel like people care. About me, I guess," he finished. He felt like he'd already embarrassed himself so much that he didn't need to be much afraid of it happening further.

Sadie was quiet for a long time, and so was he.

"That's what I mean about, y'know, saying shit like I wanna die and that I do shit that's—that nobody does and I don't know...all this stuff, I don't...I don't wanna tell people cuz I don't want people to _fix _it, cuz they can't, but they think they can, I just...but I still want somebody to know? Y'know, just...just to talk about it. But I don't want...I just want to share this stuff sometimes and...have someone know and know that they care, that somebody _knows_, and—and I—"

"Is this about the island, too?" Sadie put her words gently into the pause in his.

The fear came back and within a couple of seconds he could hear his own pulse, his hand gripped tight on hers, and she rotated hers over so their palms pressed together, she squeezed her small fingers around his with a matching tightness.

"Uh-huh," Lars answered quietly.

Finally. Finally.

She let go of his hand to slide her palm up his arm to his shoulder, her thumb brushed against the bare skin of his collarbones. He turned to her and their eyes met and he wasn't scared, he wasn't ashamed, it was just him, it was just Sadie, just them, finally.

"I'm...I really am sorry," Sadie murmured. "I did—I _was _kind of hoping that...getting some time away to just relax and everything, it would help you, but I...I know that part of it was for me. I mean, I didn't want to tell you the truth because I didn't want you to...to be upset, but also I was just having a really good time there with you, and—and it wasn't fair, and it was stupid, I think I knew that it was gonna end bad but I kept...kept trying not to think about it and just believe that eventually it would solve itself and you wouldn't have to know. It was really stupid, I'm really sorry, I'm sorry you—" Her hand squeezed his shoulder. "I don't want you to...to think that I don't. That I don't care about you."

Lars exhaled and shivered under her hand.

"I—I mean, you don't...I just need you to—to not just be hoping to fix shit about me? Like...like you can help, and you _do, _but...but I don't want...that to be the reason you're...the reason you..."

"I get it," she said quietly. "I...it's not."

"I mean," he said, "It's stupid, it sounds stupid, I just...I like that you like me and it means a lot and it sucks thinking if you're just wishing I was different? I don't want that? Y'know, if you don't like me, please don't...don't keep going, just..."

In one unbroken motion, Sadie's hand slid up from his shoulder along the nape of his neck to the back of his head, and tugged him forward as she leaned in and their foreheads met, she held him there firmly, his breath caught and he didn't make a move.

"Lars," she said, her quiet voice close, everything close. "I like you. You _know _I do. And you're right. Okay?"

"...Okay." His voice shook.

She pulled his head further forward into the crook of her neck and hugged him. He squeezed his eyes shut and curved his shoulders forward to push against hers, taking in the scent of her hair.

She held him there tightly for only a few seconds, but she was warm and soft and the summer night air made everything close and quiet and he felt safe, and immensely relieved.

When she pulled away and he leaned back upright, looking at her didn't feel intimidating or weighted down by unspoken words that strained them both, it was just easy and natural and what it had always been, just him and Sadie.

The corner of her mouth twitched in a smile.

"I like you, too," he whispered.

"I know."

"Sorry I...kissed you. On the mouth."

She blinked and he glanced away at the brick wall beside them.

"It...it's okay."

He blushed and looked down at his hands.

"I wasn't...thinking, it just happened, it—"

"But you wanted to?" she asked suddenly. He looked up at her. Her expression gave nothing away.

"Um." He couldn't sort out what his response should be so he just told the truth. "Yeah."

She touched his hand.

"That's okay. It's okay."

"I just don't want to be weird or—"

"Hey, it's okay, it's just a kiss. It's okay to want to kiss and to, y'know, kiss. It's not weird or anything."

He looked up at her silently and made steady eye contact to see if it was true.

She shifted her body as if to stand up and he leaned away to give her room but she leaned in after him until he froze and her hand touched his chin and he closed his eyes just before her soft lips pushed against his.

For a moment he couldn't form a thought. Then he moved just enough to draw an inhale and give her lower lip the softest tug. She curved her mouth over his and the kiss tasted like ice cream.

He waited a second after they drew apart to open his eyes. Her smile was more obvious now and he couldn't help a breath of a laugh in return.

"There," she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "I wanted to do that, and I did, and that's what it is. So it's okay."

"Okay," Lars said, head spinning in a way that, for once, was really nice.

He leaned against her, and felt her curve the weight of her body against his too. He didn't even mind when a car pulled up to get fuel, didn't care enough to feel nervous. Sadie laid her arm across his back and traced her fingertips in circles along the texture of his shaved hair.

"Do you wanna stay over at my place tonight?"

"Okay."


End file.
